Education license restored to the European University in St Petersburg

European University, a prestigious private graduate school well-known for its research in humanities and social sciences, has had its license restored by the education watchdog Rosobrnadzor.

The university became the centre of scandal when its license was revoked in 2016, before being partially restored and then revoked again in 2017. It was announced in July that the school has passed Rosobrnadzor’s inspections and last week it reported that the educational license has finally been granted to them and all the students who had to halt their studies have been restored on their courses.

The restoration of the license comes as an unexpected turn of events after Russia’s education watchdog has stripped another private university, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, also known as Shaninka, of its license in June, a move that considered part of a wider crackdown on private universities often politically progressive and producing independent research.

On the website, the European University stresses that it has had to remain without a license for over a year but the academic staff has done everything to “utilise this involuntary holiday to advance research, academic publications and public enlightenment work.

”The European University gained important experience and has come to a realisation that the issue of excessive formal regulation that hinders the development of the higher education in our country can only be solved with collective effort of the entire university community,” it concludes.