St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU) is pushing a special program which is well funded and aimed at developing SPbSU into one of the world’s leading universities, St. Petersburg regional news agency BaltInfo quoted ex Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin of Russia as saying. The former top government official is also the dean of SPbSU’s liberal arts and sciences department.

“New laboratories are being built. The city has given SPbSU the building of the Military Rear Service and Transport Academy, and now the university is creating there new high tech scientific and educational labs. Colleagues from Stanford University visited us not long ago and said that their university didn’t have the kind of nanotech laboratory that SPbSU did,” said Mr. Kudrin.

He emphasized that “no other university in the country has in all scientific areas such a broad choice of specialists working to ensure synergies in education as St. Petersburg State University does.”

According to the ex finance minister, university education as a whole gives people more opportunities in the modern world than narrowly focused training.