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BRIDGE Project

In July 2003, the UK Secretary of State for Education and Training and the Minister of Education for the Russian Federation, signed a statement of intent on ‘Russian-United Kingdom Partnerships in Higher Education.’ The BRIDGE project was set up to facilitate this and aimed to help UK and Russian HE institutions develop dual award programmes that lead to mutually recognised qualifications.

The project is sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), managed on a day-to-day basis by the British Council and supported by the National Training Foundation in Russia.

To increase collaborative effort between Russian and UK universities leading to dual degrees or other mutually recognised academic qualifications.
To increase the awareness of the higher education systems in the two countries and to build the basis of future sustainable partnerships between collaborating institutions.
To catalyze joint research projects between Russian and UK universities.

Only new, jointly developed programmes were funded; the project did not support franchised programmes or any other ventures where know-how is passed on at a price. Thus, mutuality is seen as a key principle upon which a partnership should be built. This applies to agreeing budgets, developing a project management pattern and setting up a framework for staff development.
To make sure the project would be seen as part of an institutional strategy, applications were to be accompanied by letters of support from university leaders on both sides. Bids from applying institutions were evaluated and ranked by a team of 3 British and 3 Russian experts to provide a more balanced view of each partnership’s potential.

Final decisions on awarding grants were made by the project steering committee composed of educators from the UK and Russia To assist newly formed partnerships in dealing with the issues that could hamper their progress ( differences between the systems of education in Russia and the UK, quality assurance policies, status and work of external examiners, parity of awards, budget management and money transfer, etc.), the British Council organized a series of workshops focused on what was seen by partner universities as important issues in ensuring a successful project. The workshops also aimed at introducing Russian universities to the essential agenda of the Bologna process. In addition to that, the project team visited a number of institutions in Russia and the UK to involve institutions that had no information about the BRIDGE initiative, and to support those who had existing projects.

The BRIDGE project started on 1 June 2004 and was divided into four stages to run until March 2008. Activities to support UK-Russia partnerships are now continuing until March 2010.

In BRIDGE 1, bids were invited from institutions that already had partnership experience with Russian HE institutions and were looking to further develop courses. Eight proposals were approved for the development of dual Masters programmes with institutions mainly in Moscow or St Petersburg.

In BRIDGE 2, applications were encouraged from institutions with little or no experience of collaborative work, to develop new partnerships. Funding was available not only for full Masters and undergraduate programmes, but also for postgraduate level Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programmes. There are now a total of 17 active BRIDGE 2 partnerships, including eight Masters programmes, one undergraduate award and eight CPD programmes.

In BRIDGE 3 (2006 / 2007), applications were encouraged for both CPDs and full degree programmes. The Steering Committee approved grants for 12 projects: three Masters programmes, one undergraduate and eight CPD programmes.

Under additional funding for Science and Technology, BRIDGE 3.5 funded one project to develop a Masters programme and one CPD.

In 2006 / 2007, the Science and Technology strand of BRIDGE granted seed corn funding to eight research co-operation partnerships.

In BRIDGE 4, two Masters and five CPD programmes leading to dual awards were funded. In addition, one Masters and two CPDs were funded under the Science and Technology strand.

In 2007 / 2008, in the second round of funding for research, the BRIDGE Science and Technology strand funded eight research co-operation partnerships.

In 2007 / 2008, the Scottish Executive funded a partnership to develop a CPD programme.

By August 2008, about 40 partnerships were active, and BRIDGE 1 and 2 universities had awarded their degrees to the first cohorts of graduates. The geographical spread of BRIDGE is impressive, especially in Russia where participating universities are located in regions from East Siberia to Kaliningrad and cover the majority of Russian administrative and territorial units.

Thanks to BRIDGE, Russian universities acquainted themselves with English education practice and so were able to create “Bologna laboratories’, centers for real educational reform towards Bologna in Russia. BRIDGE proved to be the only project of any size in Russia that gave institutions hands-on experience in implementing new approaches to quality assurance, assessment and methodology. UK universities have achieved a new level of insight into the Russian educational system, thus adding to their understanding of the global market.

University project managers and their teams experienced many aspects of course development and management, including validation, institutional audits, budget management etc., thus building expert capacity that would be extremely useful for European universities wishing to develop partnerships and inform partnership development agendas.
Joint research projects have resulted in high quality research and helped establish and promote links between research communities.

BRIDGE grants, in spite of being modest in size, gave UK and Russian higher schools invaluable partnership-building expertise and helped some partners to apply successfully for substantial European grants.

Financial issues can be a major barrier to the success of partnership projects. Financial arrangements between institutions need to be made clear from the outset. Also, parterns need to be clear about the ability of students to pay or to attract sponsorship.

BRIDGE projects were more successful when they were incorporated into an overall institutional strategy. When they were fully integrated, some issues, like high tuition fees set by UK universities due to local financial regulations, were not a major stumbling block.

When more effort is invested in developing a strategy for marketing British-Russian programmes in Russia, student numbers increase. Institutions and partnership projects such as BRIDGE need to develop such a strategy at project planning stage.

It became clear in the course of project development that apart from inviting well established Russian universities to apply for BRIDGE funding, the project team could have considered attracting smaller private universities that have sometimes shown a greater degree of flexibility and commitment.