Young People from Wealthier Russian Regions Far More Likely to Get Higher Educations than Those from Poorer Ones, New Study Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 28 – Yet another divide between Russia’s wealthier regions and its poorer ones has been documented, that concerning access to higher educational institutions; and even more than the more familiar divisions, this one will cast a shadow long into Russia’s future, Andrey Zakharov and Kseniya Adamovich say.

            The two Higher School of Economics scholars have used regional data for the first time to document regional inequality in access to higher education (“Regional Differences in Access to Educational Resources” (in Russian, Ekonomicheskaya sotsiologiya 21:1(2020: 60-80 at publications.hse.ru/articles/339003106; summarized at iq.hse.ru/news/345575886.html).

            Differential access to good higher education, of course, depends on many things, including how their families view schooling, how many resources they have to promote the training of their children, and the quality of teachers and the quality of schools, Zakharov and Adamovich say.

            Using Rosstat data from 2013 to 2015, the two focused on regional differences in the tracks pupils and their parents choose and the results of their schooling as measured by testing and the way these things are linked to the level of economic development, urbanization, and human capital across the Russian Federation.

            In Moscow, 48 percent of adults have completed higher educations while in Chechnya only 22 percent have. And the wealthiest 10 percent of the regions have GDPs per capita 4.5 times that of those in the poorest decile. That translates into spending on education at 114,000 rubles (1900 US dollars) a year in the former but only 40,400 (660 US dollars) in the latter.

            There is relatively little difference in percentage terms across the regions in the tracks children select, but in the more affluent urbanized regions, the teachers are more experienced and there are fewer children who leave school after only the 9^th grade. These early leavers don’t go on to higher educations.

            Pupils in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan and “to a lesser extent” Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod oblasts thus have a better chance to go onto university than do those in poorer and often predominantly non-Russian regions. What this means, Zakharov and Adamovich say, is that existing inequalities are continued or even exacerbated with each passing year.

            At the present time, they continue, regional inequality in access to higher education is increasing because the school system is not performing as it was once intended as a social lift for those who might otherwise be passed over. Russia needs to find a way to correct this situation and give those in what are now poorer regions a greater chance for the future.