From: nobby@milton.u.washington.edu (Vitaly Shmatikov)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: More education talk...
Date: 29 Sep 92 18:36:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Sep29.183636.20765
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <LEONID.92Sep29121055@tuna.uchicago.edu> leonid@tuna.uchicago.edu (Leonid Andreev) writes:
>Vadim Maslov writes:
>
>>   Vitaly Shmatikov writes:
>>   >	I spent almost 3 years (Sept.'89-Apr.'92) at Moscow University,
>>   >at its infamous VMiK department (literal translation for the American
>>   >readers: Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics). The
>>   >quality of education was truly depressing. With few exceptions
>>   >instructors were almost incompetent.
>>
>>     Well, I also graduated from VMiK. Indeed, there are some 
>>   problems in there but these rude insults impress even me
>>   (I never was a big fan of VMiK). Probably they are meant to
>>   carry a message about their author.
>
>Vadim!

... deleted ...

>the years of your study? Things have changed a lot since
>last 2 or 3 years. My friends write me, that it's really
>

Maybe that's the reason. I apologize for my rudeness but the
condition of VMiK was *really* pitiful when I was studying there.
I can recall only one bright scientist (Il'in) reading the lectures. The level
of others was (sorry) much below average. After 2 years of mathematical
analysis (8 hours a week) which was supposed to include such advanced
topics as multiple improper intergrals, Fourier transforms, etc.
barely 10% of my classmates could take a simple indefinite integral
and it's not their fault. As for prominent computational mathematics
scientists I would like to get some names. If you mean people like
Acad. Tikhonov, Kostomarov, etc. then I don't buy it. I don't care
about their scientific achievements since they are notorious 
anti-Semites and in the early 80s succeffully concluded 'ethnic
cleansing' of the department having driven almost all Jews out of there.
These people (BTW they are in charge of VMiK up to now) *really* stink.

>For you, Vitaly:
>I beg your real pardon, I've got no desire to offend you,
>and maybe it's true, that VMiK is THAT bad, but it seems
>to me you just don't have any, say, moral right of writing
>this stuff. Why? Because you *didn't graduate* from there.
>You wrote, you were studying for 3 years there. OK. Maybe
>you were really bright and all. But do you know what is the
>first reaction of the people who read it? - `this guy is
>just a dropout, he didn't manage to graduate from there and
>now he claims that the place stinks'. I really trust you are

I don't think I'm a dropout. After all I'm still enrolled :-).
My transcripts contain nothing but A's (though at VMiK these A's mean
*nothing*) and I left *only* because I had got an immigration
permission from the U.S. and couldn't stay in that country
a day longer.

It's arguable if I have moral right to judge VMiK without having
graduated from there and I sincerely apologize to everybody
who could have been offended by my irrelevantly rude article.

Nevertheless, I would like to reiterate that if VMiK department of
Moscow State University is of any value as a gauge of the Soviet educational
system then the American one is notably superior.

				Vitaly Shmatikov (aka Nobby)
				nobby@u.washington.edu