What do you think of Innopolis?

Question

IT education

Good evening to all readers.
Not so long ago, Innopolis University was formed , which is currently recruiting students for master's and 3-4 year undergraduate courses. I won’t list the main advantages, but you can notice them here . I am one of those who have already passed the selection and now I am at a crossroads - to enter or continue my studies at my university (which does not promise such bright prospects).
Actually, all my doubts are swirling because of the following points:

• There is a suspicion that they are accepted there "anyhow" and they do not pay much attention to the level of knowledge of applicants. English online test lang. I easily googled it on the Internet, the online test (and it was completely similar at the selection at the university itself) in IT was strictly in discrete mathematics, which I seem to have flunked, and even at the interview, with all my jambs with English and, to put it mildly, incompetence in the questions that I was asked, they still took me for a 90% grant. Everyone with whom I spoke was also taken, and according to them, they also did not perform brilliantly.
  After admission, you need to finish those subjects that you did not have at the university. The man, who bluntly said that he did not study anything related to IT at all at the university, was told that these exams would be quite simple and there was nothing to worry about.
  Despite the condition of admission on the site, that for admission you need an average score in the test > 4 and a completed second year, students are accepted from the first year and with a lower score - the main thing is to pass the selection at the university itself.
  
• The cost of studying at the university without a grant costs about 90 thousand / month. With 90% grant - 60 thousand / semester. The most interesting thing is that if you are expelled for any reason, you will be obliged to pay the amount that they spent on you. That is, the full amount of training for the entire time that you studied there. Obviously, not everyone will take it out and there is a chance to lose everything. Yes, of course, a simple money scam is unlikely, but it all looks rather strange. Actually, this is the first time I've seen something like this.
  The situation is similar if, after completing your undergraduate degree, you do not work for a year in one of the proposed IT companies for an as yet unknown amount. The moment of the case, if you are taken into the army before employment, while it remains open and for some reason while all representatives of the university either evade the answer or give conflicting answers.
  
• At the moment, the university has only a "license for the right to conduct educational activities" and "is preparing for state accreditation." Accordingly, as I understand it, he still has the option of not getting it.
  

Question - what do you think about this? Maybe you know something about him - good or bad; maybe someone has good advice on what to do in such a situation and whether it is worth it.

Answer 1

I got into a similar situation, only "entered" the master's program. They answered, they say, a grant of 90%, i.e. 70,000 rubles per semester. Education 3 semesters, i.e. 210,000. Sorry, but for that kind of money I can enter almost any Russian university! Smells like divorce. I have not made a final decision yet, but most likely I will refuse. These guys offer to give up everything, for the sake of not understanding what.
The selection process in my case was extremely careless, twice their professor simply forgot that I had an interview! The first time I waited 3 hours and did not wait, the second time I waited 30 minutes and called them, after which, after 15 minutes, he contacted me.
It seems that they do not read their chat, which is in the personal account of the candidate, at all. You have to call them after each message and ask them to answer the next message.
I also did not find a list of their partners for whom it will be necessary to work for 18 months. Salary promised over 100 kilorubles, but these are just words, but in fact a pig in a poke.
--Updated--
Finally, their contract for training fell into my hands! Actually, it's very strange. that these treaties, like many other official documents, are not in the public domain, but this is not about that now.
If you carefully read the text, you can find the following things in it:
1. Salary for a mandatory one and a half year work from 32,000 rubles - which is generally nothing for a programmer;
2. They can send to work ANYWHERE at the request of the grantor, whoever is against reimburses the full cost of the grant (2,100,000 for masters);
3. The future employer is also determined by the grantor, i.e. purely technically, you may be required to work ... yes, at least for ISIS;
4. Innopolis is a joint-stock company, non-state, i.e. it's not even a university in the classical sense of the word, it's just a company with a "University" sign hanging on it;
5. The contract clearly states in black and white that Innopolis' activities are regulated not only by the law on the formation of the Russian Federation, but also by some local acts! Of course, these acts are not advertised and their number is not known for certain;
6. If you go to the website of the Kazan Court, you will find that Innopolis, only in 2015, has already been involved in several lawsuits with citizens! Judicial acts, of course, are not attached, but taking into account the fact that the persons are not legal, I can roughly guess what kind of litigation ...;
And this is just a cursory look at the contract...
After I refused 90% of the grant, I was informed that the decision regarding me was revised, and asked if I would agree to study at Innopolis if I was given a 100% grant. No comments, as they say...
PS: I'm not saying that Innopolis is bad or good, my observations are absolutely neutral, and do not aim to persuade you to refuse to enter Innopolis, or vice versa to persuade you to enter. Simply, as they say, what I see, I sing.

Answer 2

Maybe someone has the latest information on the current year?

Answer 3

I am finishing this year an intensive undergraduate program at Innopolis University. What I learned and what I liked:
1. Work with foreign scientific articles and patents, use Google Scholar, understand in a short time which articles are worth attention and contain the information I need.
2. Work iteratively in a team on software development projects in all phases (collection of requirements, development of architecture, coding, testing) using Git (Bitbucket) and "boards" (project backlog - iteration backlog - completed - verified)
3. Develop software requirements specification (international equivalent of TK). And he did it in a project with a distributed team - 3 analysts in Innopolis, 3 frontline developers in Madrid and 3 guys from Brazil who developed the server part.
4. Studied methods of machine learning, data mining and information retrieval. In a team of two people, a simple search engine was implemented as a term paper.
5. Developed the skill of conversational and presentational English, reading technical literature. Gained experience in interviews with representatives of such companies as Yandex and SKB-Kontur.
These are the most significant skills and knowledge that I received, and I consider myself not the best student in my set (as can be seen from my grades). There are guys who have done much more

Answer 4

I can only say about the master's degree in robotics.
The first year is like fundamental subjects for every programmer: OOP in Java \ C ++, algorithms and data structures, Databases, patterns, etc. If you already have a good programmer background, then most of the first year subjects will feel like you are staying for the second year and repeating all over again. According to professors, there is a strong disparity in the levels of teaching and there is a serious turnover of teachers, especially foreign ones. There are very competent ones, for example, Zuev, who have vast industrial experience and are able to deliver high-class lectures; there are also strong professors, but they have little idea of ​​teaching in general; and finally, there are complete zeros that barely connect three words into a sentence, they won’t convey anything intelligible for the entire lecture, and there is a feeling that this person is working with the thought “and so it will do”, I personally have not seen a minimum of washing away to listen to them (self study only saves there). I won’t say about other universities, but Innopolis has excellent living conditions (24k scholarship, comfortable dorms), but if you think that you have the strength to enter more serious institutions, then go there.

Answer 5

I drive past Innopolis to the dacha, where the horse has not yet been lying around in terms of the finished village. So you have to live in the mud and along with the builders. Even in Kazan IT, no one believes in this, considering it to be inoperable money laundering.

Answer 6

graduated from uni. in the direction of the magistracy
1) the terms of the contract are different for everyone. Accordingly, the terms and conditions of working out are different for everyone. Of all those who graduated with me, not one has a real salary lower than 60k. an average of 80. In 80% of the cases (known to me) they remain to work in the city of Innopolis. Some of them go to Moscow, St. Petersburg or their hometowns to work with partners (MTS, Megafon, etc.), as far as I know, there is an official quota for those who will work NOT in Innopolis - 10%.
2) You choose employers from the pool. Now there are quite a lot of interesting companies ranging from fairly bold (in a good sense of the word) startups to Sbertech, Acronis and ICL.
Startups are a separate issue. Univer och supports promising startups (including student startups).
3) University with accreditation. And very uni. State Diploma. But my IMHO accreditation has led to the fact that educational programs have become more classical. And the whole cool feature of advanced and really high-quality and interesting programs will probably be driven to the realities of the requirements of state standards. And here it is necessary to go not for a piece of paper. And for real knowledge. For the sake of paper, there are a bunch of "online universities"
4) at the expense of internal acts. They are all freely available on the university website. I have read them all. There is nothing supernatural and driving you into debt and obligations. It is clear that money is being invested in you. And they want to get out of it. Nothing is free, but there are no cabal conditions either.
5) Familiar with at least 2 editions. I have not heard a single extremely negative review (even from foreign citizens, including from Europe). There are those who are dissatisfied with some moments. But on average, everyone is more than satisfied.
6) The quality of the programs is different. I am completely satisfied with the SNE program. In particular, I would like to mention Professor Rashid Hussein. I have never met a person more devoted to his work, to his students. And I have something to compare.
7) Projects. Projects are not "paperwork" with fictitious topics and relevance, as in average universities. Projects and WRCs are provided by the industry. And it's cool! You have to work with real problems. Your product will REALLY be used if you really get results.
8) In one of the reviews I read that the university administration does not make contact with students. It is not true. There was a good reason to turn to management. The problem was solved in the shortest possible time in favor of the students.
9) My opinion Innopolis as a city and university is an ideal place to start "adult life". Everything is there for the student. Housing, meals, scholarships (not a single university known to me can compete in terms of scholarships to Innopolis). Even for the minimum possible scholarship for a triple bachelor, you will be left with housing, food and a couple of thousand free money, and in principle you will not need anything. And if you are an excellent student, then in a couple of months you can afford a MacBook.
10) the above mentioned grant payments, by deduction, will be indicated in your contracts, and I can say that in my contract there were only 2 reasons for the full refund of the grant amount. And they are well founded. And if you are expelled for academic failure, then there are quite loyal conditions.
11) English. You should not cheat on the preliminary exam in English (online) you: 1) you will have to study in English, 2) in full-time selections you will pass all tasks in English. What you cheat at the first stage will not save you at the next. Especially at interviews with professors and a stripped-down analogue of IELTS.
12) Today it is clean, beautiful and you feel safe here. The infrastructure is actively developing. But even what is there covers 95% of all possible interests.
13) Public lectures are constantly held at the university. Even they are already giving odds to the classical university.
My personal satisfaction with the time spent in Innopolis is 99.9%. the remaining 0.1% are incomprehensible people who even here manage to screw up, ruin lawns and park like assholes, with a huge number of free parking spaces. By the way, the administration promptly corrects the consequences of the actions of these people.
Satisfaction with education at UI is 100%.

Answer 7

I'll add my 5 kopecks a little,
Bachelor's and Master's programs at the moment are very different in quality. The magistracy, especially the areas of robotics and big data, is "stuffed with what it was." The training department still does not separate the concepts of "big data" and "data analysis". Of the required courses, only the introductory course "Machine Learning" was relevant to data analysis, which we received only in the last semester of training. The rest of the items are more related to security. In general, if you are planning to enter a local magistracy, and its name is not SNE, then it is better not to do this. I can’t say anything bad about the bachelor’s degree, maybe someone will add
Contracts have been changed for new students, in particular, they are obliged to pay the entire scholarship if they are expelled for any reason. And you will have many reasons to drop out, take this into account.
With regards to obligations to work out, there are no good places here. It will be either Sbertech (I don’t advise going there, the projects are rotten), Akbars (I can’t say anything) or one of the small offices (here, how lucky). You are obliged to work here, so only 10% of graduates will be able to leave for Moscow (it seems like an official quota)

Answer 8

Depending on what to choose, one of the two universities in the Russian Federation with education in English. If you want to get relevant skills, then one of the best options.