Khalikov: “The government may implement Summer Campus participants' effective solutions immediately”

“We hope this campus’ participants will never forget their teams, these days and Tatarstan,” acting Tatarstan President Ildar Khalikov said while closing the 5th Presidential Academy’s Summer Campus event at Innopolis.

To become a participant in one of the presidential academy’s ‘largest and most ambitious projects’, as Russian Association of Innovative Regions director Ivan Fedotov put it, students from world and national universities had been put through tough selection. Of more than 7,000 candidates, 226 best ones had been able to make it.

Twelve teams’ eleven days of hard work resulted in a set of solutions on four cases dealing with urgent global issues. The list of assignments included regional conflict, light tight oil recovery, migration policy and matters pertaining to weapon possession.

“We did not just have to find the right answers but analyse all the positive and negative aspects of our decisions,” group of mentors’ leader Evgeny Mironov commented. “All the groups coped well,” he added.

“Participants were allowed to select 2 or 3 cases; most responded to the most urgent subjects, migration policy and weapon,” he went on to say.

Interestingly, winners are selected the way they are selected at Eurovision, when voting is allowed for anyone except own team.

The purpose of the organisers was to train students from different countries and universities work as a team, make quick decisions and be prepared to talk to anyone, including high-ranking officials.

Russian Association of Innovative Regions director Ivan Fedotov upset the event’s participants: “You will never again be able to return to the campus and assemble the same team. These are the rules: you can only be a participant once,” he said.

When asked whether the campus would be expanded, Ivan Fedotov said the campus would definitely ‘remain an elite school, only admitting slightly more than 220 people, even if candidates are not 7,000 but 40,000, but they need to be the best’.

Ildar Khalikov said: “The state may implement effective solutions this campus teams have come up with immediately.”

The closing ceremony concluded with the campus' flag being hauled down.