School of Advanced Studies
The School of Advanced Studies (SAS; ) is a greenfield experimental higher institution at the University of Tyumen in Siberia, Russia, focusing on both teaching and multidisciplinary research. Academics. SAS curricula contains core and elective courses. Electives are courses that both permanent and visiting faculty offer for all the SAS students based on the faculty's research interests. Out of 4 weekly sessions, one is reserved for student teamwork. In the academic year 2019–20, SAS offered 31 different electives. During the first two years, students follow the core curriculum and also take elective courses. Afterwards, students declare  one of the seven majors: Information Technology and Digital Society, Cultural Studies, Life Sciences, Economics, Film and Media Studies, Historical Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology. Additionally, students complete one of the minors. In addition to the BA program, SAS offers a Master program: Master of Arts in Experimental Higher Education. The Experimental Higher Education (MA X-HE) program was launched in 2020. It is a 2-year long program which aims to train its students to become professionals in higher education, focusing on educational innovations. Research. SAS research is carried out in multidisciplinary research teams. In 2020, there were four  research teams operating within SAS: None of these groups has produced any meaningful collaborative research in four years, because the 'innovative' SAS research model, based on which they got 5-100 funding, doesn't work. Faculty. SAS faculty are a combination of full-time professors and visiting professors. Faculty are selected via the Project Design Session cluster hiring process, based on how they perform in multidisciplinary teamwork exercises. 75% of the original faculty were no longer at SAS after three years. There is a high faculty turnover because despite its rhetoric about having a collaborative ethos, SAS is run on  principles derived from Soviet era management guru Georgi Shchedrovitsky, and seeks to replace people's intrinsic motivations to do research with fear of being fired or publicly humiliated. Academic writing center. The Academic writing center helps SAS students with their writing by offering them feedback in the form of one-on-one consultations. The AWC also organises workshops for the students. Outreach. During the academic year, SAS offers open courses twice a week, which are free for the public to attend, are recorded and published on the School's YouTube channel. Every summer, SAS runs a summer school for high -school students. Each year, SAS organizes a conference. The past conferences include: Controversy. A sociologist who worked at SAS and interviewed faculty and students about their experience, published an article in openDemocracy in 2020, where she described it as an "abusive institution" and an "academic sweatshop." An analysis representing an opposing view of SAS has recently been published by a team of Stanford graduate students who interviewed management-approved faculty and administrators under the title "Reimagining Russian Higher Education". This belongs to the burgeoning genre of SAS puff-pieces placed in venues that only appear to have disinterested editorial standards  by SAS management, and can be accurately described as propaganda.