There exist no insurmountable organizational obstacles whatsoever that could prevent Ural State Technical University (USTU) and Ural State University (USU) from merging into Ural Federal University. This fact has been distinctly stated by the two colleges’ ad hoc committees whose heads met on USU’s premises recently, the spokesperson for Ural State University reports.

‘To start with, we decided to single out all the problems in all the fields of our activity. The first discussions have made it clear that some disagreements the two committees might have are related to tactics only. However, there is still a lot of work to be done. At the moment, we are drawing up a schedule and trying to involve a number of new experts into the process. These experts’ job is to agree on the specific contents of the necessary documents and on the implementation of certain actions,’ says USU’s Rector Dmitriy Bugrov.

The recent findings have shown that out of some three hundred educational programs that both USU and USTU are currently offering their students, only twenty-two run a risk of overlapping one another. Ural State University has achieved more in terms of Master’s programs, whereas USTU is more advanced in terms of distance learning schemes. Now the two universities have to complete their conversion to the two-level higher education system and develop their additional education and training projects.