The con­fer­ence brought together young sci­en­tists and stu­dents of MGIMO and other Russ­ian and for­eign uni­ver­si­ties. The prob­lems of mod­ern edu­ca­tion in the world were dis­cussed.

The con­fer­ence ini­ti­ated the cre­ation of a dis­cus­sion plat­form with the stu­dents them­selves as the most active part of the soci­ety inter­ested in invest­ment in edu­ca­tion and real­iz­ing the need for change in the edu­ca­tional pol­icy of the coun­try.

The con­fer­ence had been opened by MGIMO Rec­tor, Aca­d­e­mi­cian AV Torkunov and pres­i­dent of the WPF “Dia­logue of Civ­i­liza­tions” VI Yakunin.

Break­out ses­sions were held on the fol­low­ing topics:

Inno­va­tion in Edu­ca­tion:

• The impact of edu­ca­tion on the polit­i­cal agenda
• Con­tin­u­ous edu­ca­tion dur­ing life­time
• Edu­ca­tion as a national pol­icy pri­or­ity
• Cre­ation of con­di­tions, pre­req­ui­sites and tech­nolo­gies required for the emer­gence of domes­tic stu­dent exchange programs

Human cap­i­tal:

• What is the role of new edu­ca­tional tech­nolo­gies and the basic cri­te­ria for assess­ing the qual­ity of edu­ca­tion?
• Who is the main investor in val­ues: soci­ety , gov­ern­ment, busi­ness or peo­ple them­selves?
• What is the role of edu­ca­tion in human cap­i­tal formation?

Busi­ness edu­ca­tion:

• Cre­ation of a cre­ative envi­ron­ment for coop­er­a­tion among stu­dents, young sci­en­tists and busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives
• Strate­gic objec­tives of human-​oriented busi­ness edu­ca­tion
• The prob­lem of con­sumerism in plan­ning busi­ness strate­gies of companies

Pre­sen­ta­tion of youth orga­ni­za­tions:

• Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment , as a fac­tor in the edu­ca­tional process
• Cur­rent trends in the forms of orga­ni­za­tion and activ­i­ties of the stu­dent move­ments and clubs
• A need to estab­lish infor­mal inter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­nec­tions to form a com­mon space of research for stu­dents from lead­ing universities

Par­tic­i­pants with the best pro­pos­als were given an oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss the issues relat­ing to edu­ca­tion with youth rep­re­sen­ta­tives from many coun­tries present at the Youth Time Rhodes Forum in Octo­ber 2011.