EHU Rector Outlines University Reforms and Mission to Cultivate Intellectual Elite

European Humanities University (EHU) Rector Vilius Šadauskas has spearheaded a significant reform of the institution, reshaping its academic, financial, and administrative structures over the past 1.5 years. Since joining EHU in 2018, Šadauskas, who holds a doctorate in education and bachelor's and master's degrees in history, has driven changes to modernize the private university's operations and shed outdated practices.

“

EHU is a specific institution with a social mission – to help educate young people from Belarus, and later a wider circle of students from Eastern Europe, in the spirit of European academic thought.

The university's core mission, as articulated by Šadauskas, is to provide education to young people from Belarus and Eastern Europe, fostering an environment of European academic thought. He stresses the "civic responsibility" inherent in this mission, acknowledging the personal risks and challenges faced by students arriving at EHU. Ensuring high-quality studies and research is a direct obligation to these students, their families, and international sponsors.

“

Ensuring high quality of study and science is our direct responsibility to the students themselves, their parents, and international sponsors who finance our activities.

Šadauskas distinguishes university education from vocational training, asserting that universities are tasked with nurturing society's intellectual elite, scholars, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and philosophers. He warns that a lack of intellectual potential in national leadership can impede societal progress. Therefore, beyond specialized knowledge in fields like communication or design, EHU prioritizes a "universal humanitarian foundation" encompassing philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and classical works. This, he believes, fundamentally reshapes students' thinking and worldview.

“

When individuals lacking the necessary intellectual potential, certain abilities, and capital of skills come to the helm of the state, it can negatively affect the development of the entire society.

This focus is particularly critical for EHU's student body, many of whom come from countries with strong authoritarian characteristics where freedom of thought and access to information are restricted. The university dedicates significant attention in the initial years to providing essential humanitarian and social knowledge, addressing gaps students may have from their previous environments. Šadauskas is convinced that liberating the mind unlocks creative potential, leading many EHU graduates to engage in public organizations or entrepreneurial ventures, thereby contributing to the future development of their home countries.

“

Therefore, alongside specific professional knowledge – communication or design programs – the university must impart a universal humanitarian foundation: philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, the works of the classics.