During the panel discussion, experts discussed the role of teaching in the higher education system as an effective mechanism for training engineering personnel.  Advanced engineering schools are considered as one of the key tools for ensuring technological and personnel sovereignty. In the current conditions, the task of rethinking their role and moving from a pilot model to a sustainable system mechanism for training engineering personnel is becoming urgent.

Four key issues were at the center of the discussion: the transformation of the Advanced Engineering Schools project, the experience of first-wave schools in achieving self-sufficiency and new strategic guidelines, technological expertise in the project, as well as the challenges facing the industry in interacting with AES.

Representatives of government agencies, businesses and universities took part in the discussion, including Vladimir Gutenev, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Industry and Trade, Anthony Schwindt, Deputy Head of the Secretariat of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Knyaginin, Vice Governor of St. Petersburg, Mars Khasanov, Director of Science at Gazprom Neft, and General Director of the Center for Technological Development LLC. leadership" Irina Zhukova, as well as the rectors of the universities participating in the first wave project.

Addressing the participants in the discussion, Rector of Southern Federal University Inna Shevchenko stressed that the Advanced SFedU Engineering School has been operating for the fourth year and since last year has reached self-sufficiency without receiving federal funding. The main task today is to maintain this status, while maintaining the high quality of engineering personnel training and scientific developments.

Inna Konstantinovna formulated five key theses about the experience of SFedU AES, the first of which is: AES was originally conceived as a boutique story for a major interdisciplinary task. Today it has grown into a professional school. The second option is to invest in the human capital of the region. Our young engineers saw the semiconductor industry from Donetsk to Novosibirsk and understood the real technological structure of enterprises. The third is the transition from the customer—contractor model to a long-term partnership. So, at the request of SFedU, Rostec developed a management skills program to look at tasks from the perspective of a state corporation. Fourth: methodology of joint design. Together with Rostec, we have created not just an educational program, but an industrial and educational standard for the microelectronics industry. Fifth: WRITING is about dealing with complexity. The path taken by the university became the basis of the strategy of engineering education and the transition to a new model of higher education.

"Writing a project in any resolution is a work with complexity. We need to teach students how to work with complexity, with fundamentally different protocols from an advanced engineering school. And what our university has accomplished in organizational and substantive terms is the basis of the strategy of engineering education and, in general, the basis for the transition to a new model of higher education, in the second wave of which we are now in," Inna Shevchenko emphasized.

The Rector of SFedU also stressed that the localization of partnerships should start from their own region.

The participants of the discussion agreed that the Advanced Engineering Schools project has proven its effectiveness as one of the key tools for ensuring the technological and personnel sovereignty of the country. Today, the project participants are faced with the task of moving from a pilot model to a sustainable system mechanism for training engineering personnel. Further development of the Institute will require the introduction of a cluster approach, updating educational programs to meet the real needs of business, as well as the active involvement of industry professionals in teaching. Only systematic cooperation between universities, business and the state will ensure the training of a new generation of engineers capable of solving the tasks of national technological leadership projects.