Polymaths in power

Alumni to be proud of 163 to 165 show that, whatever the inequalities of British higher education, there are some countries where you can be a polytechnic graduate and get right to the top.

Deposed Russian prime minister Victor Chernomyrdin, whose past in the gas industry would seem to qualify him perfectly for the traditional post-premiership job of running a power station, graduated from Kuibyshev Polytechnic while Tsar Boris prepared for the career that would turn "being in Ireland" into an eerily apt euphemism for being hung-over by attending the Urals Polytechnic Institute.

New stand-in PM Sergei Kiriyenko has several alma maters - he was at the Gorki Institute of Water Transport Engineering before switching to finance and banking at the Academy of Economics in Moscow.