Students Choose the Best Teachers at the HSE Moscow and St Petersburg

Between May 26 and June 7 students can vote in the HSE annual election for best teachers of the academic year. This year not only students in Moscow but at the HSE St Petersburg can vote. So, what do you have to do to register your vote?

Why vote?

Voting for the best teachers, on the one hand gives each student ‘consumer’ the chance to say what they think about the quality of the teaching they are getting and the competition, on the other, allows us to encourage the most popular teachers in the university. ‘Both aspects are important’, says the HSE First Vice Rector Vadim Radaev , ‘and besides, I think student opinion is the clearest indicator of which teachers are best, because the teachers themselves know and assess one another professionally mainly through their research while it’s the students who listen to them and see them constantly in the lecture hall’.

Last year’s results and this year’s challenge

In 2013, 45% of all students voted, compared to 31% in 2011.

270 full-time teaching staff members and 86 replacement or free-lance teachers won the accolade of Best Teacher.

The most active voters among the students were at the Faculty of History (86.3% of all students in the faculty), the School of Asian Studies (84.5%) and the Faculty of Law (76.4%).

‘Well, let’s see if the St Petersburg campus History and Law students can beat our Moscow record holders!’ says Vadim Radaev, throwing down the gauntlet.

How to vote

Look for the timetable for voting on your year pages on the website at hse.ru/en/best	Come at the appointed time to the appointed place with your student ID and you will be given a unique voting number	Find a free computer and get access to the list of teachers, fill in the fields for your voting number, year and faculty	Choose two best lecturers and two best seminar tutors, who have taught you this year

 

Counting the votes

The procedure for counting votes is based on the experience of previous years: depending on the number of students we are introducing corrective coefficients to account for a teacher’s rating according to the results of the vote. The count also makes allowances for the scale effect. This increases the relative chances of teachers on major programmes where, in order to win, they need a large number of students to vote. Besides, there will be separate counts for Master’s programmes which increase the chances of winning for those who teach them.

Reorganisation at HSE and voting results

HSE is undergoing a reorganisation: Three large faculties have been created which combine several pre-existing faculties and departments. How will this process effect the elections and bonuses for teachers, as students are voting in this academic year but next term the teachers they voted for will formally be part of the new faculties? ‘The counting is not on the basis of faculties but of teaching programmes and year groups, and that is not changing,’ Vadim Radaev emphasizes, 'so the rules for voting and counting stay the same. Bonuses for the winning teachers will be paid from September 2014 regardless of the reorganisation. Teachers and replacement teachers, who are elected, keep their status into the next academic year.' All the details about paying bonuses to teachers are written in the special regulations for the campus in Moscow and St Petersburg. 

The voting results will be published on the website in June.