The Student Council of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) has begun collecting signatures for a petition calling for the abolition of compulsory Chinese language study at university. On this subject reported on the Student Council page on VKontakte.
The petition, addressed to the university’s rector, Dmitry Livanov, says its authors oppose the forced study of the Chinese language and want students to be able to choose between English, Chinese or Spanish. The writers of the document believe that the university “should give students the opportunity to build their academic career independently”, according to their professional project.
At the same time, the appeal notes that the appearance of the Chinese language at the university is “an excellent innovation that creates new opportunities for students in a changing world”.
The Student Council also demanded high quality teaching of foreign languages ​​at the institute.
“We tried to negotiate with the management of the FIA ​​(Foreign Languages ​​Department), but they came to an impasse. The changes promoted by the DIIA are absurd and harmful to Phystech – we cannot authorize them,” the document states.
President of the student council Ilya Zakharov Express hope that the university will consider the wishes expressed in the petition. “As practice shows, often the administration and personally the rector during such broad discussions listen to the position of the students. And we hope the same situation will happen again this time,” he said.
Earlier, MIPT students complained that they were forced to learn Chinese, which has become compulsory at the institute along with English. How writing On March 28, the telegram channel “Attention, news”, while Spanish, German and French disappeared from the program – it became impossible to enroll in courses for them, and “in their place , students are offered 2 hours of English and Chinese” per week.
University press office explain Vedomosti that MIPT discusses the introduction of the Chinese language in the educational program as a compulsory second language so that graduates can read technical documentation and access scientific publications in Chinese.
As the institute noted, now “up to 27% of all scientific papers in key MIPT areas have been written in Chinese”, and, according to forecasts, by 2030 “up to half of all technical and engineering documentation will be published in the language of our eastern neighbour.
After the start of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Moscow began to cooperate more actively with China. In particular, at the end of March, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a two-day visit to Moscow, during which the parties, among other things, signed a package of documents on expanding economic partnership and deepening political cooperation.
