Higher school buildings to be managed by international company - premier
ArmInfo.There should be no university in the city of Yerevan, and there should be no university outside the Academic City. All universities of the Republic, Armenian, foreign, private, and state, should operate only inside the Academic City, Armenia's Premier Nikol Pashinyan stated at a session of the Economic Policy Council in Dilijan.
"If we try to certify and license our universities, not a single university will get that license. In other words, there is legislation in our country that universities must comply with this or that standard," the premier said.
"We said: what to do to make our universities comply with at least our legislation, which is not the highest standard? And we have seen that it is not possible, we cannot transform those buildings, etc., because in the modern world, obviously the physical infrastructure must be combined with the content infrastructure, because one without the other creates a gap. And that's why we said that we have to start that process from scratch, and that's where the idea came from.
"Moreover, we are getting into international scandals because of these universities, we are talking about the international reputation of Armenia, but there were at least dozens of publications in the international press about how, for example, there are universities in Armenia that sell fake medical diplomas, fake medical degrees of various specialties. they sell diplomas, etc. And when we go after those universities to close them with the logic that they don't meet the licensing conditions, they make a very legitimate argument, they say, sorry, let's go and look at the state universities. Very good, you set that standard, we have no problem, so set that standard for all universities, both private universities, state universities and foreign universities. This is where we see that if we are very principled, all universities should be closed with the logic that they do not meet the licensing conditions," Armenia's premier said.
"Therefore, if in the long term we move the universities to the Academic City, which is, in fact, a mega- project that will require a billion and more dollars of investment in the long term, the question arises: what will happen to the old buildings? In the past, the practice in Armenia was to expropriate the buildings of the old infrastructure to create a new infrastructure, but we realized that this is a bad idea. And we are now discussing the following idea, that all those buildings of the city of Yerevan should be consolidated into one organization and given to a company with an international reputation for management as territories. And all the money generated from there will go to finance the Academic City and the university system. The question is whether it will go to the state budget as a revenue or go directly to the accounts of the Academic City Fund. And this is what we are thinking about today," Pashinyan said.
According to the concept of the Academic Town program, the project will be launched in 20230. Earlier, the head of the Ministry of Education and Science, Zhanna Andreasyan, reported that two places are planned for the physical location of the Academy Town: the territory adjacent to the 17th quarter of the city of Yerevan, the predominant part of which is state or municipal property, and the territory of the film studio "Hayfilm" named after Hamo Beknazaryan, the total area of which is about 700 hectares. In this case, the main site will be the territory adjacent to the 17th quarter, and the territory of the Hayfilm studio will be used if necessary in accordance with the master plan. According to the minister, up to 16 universities will be located on the territory of Academic Town - up to 8 state enlarged universities and up to 8 private or international higher educational institutions. "Currently, the concept describes in detail 4 clusters - technological, arts, educational and officer. The academic town is adjacent to one highway; it will be connected to Yerevan and the railway, part of which already passes through the main section," the minister said.