One in Every Four Students at Russia’s Top Universities Plans to Move Abroad, Survey Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – A survey of 3500 undergraduate and graduate students at Russia’s leading universities finds that one in every four of them plans to move abroad to live and work, yet another way in which the brain drain from Putin’s Russia is continuing and harming the future of the country.

            Not surprisingly, Russian officials are presenting the results of this survey as an indication that everything is fine, pointing out that most of those saying they plan to leave have no clear intentions and that three out of four of the students say they don’t plan to go (yugtimes.com/news/84420 and thinktanks.by/publication/2022/11/01/iz-rossii-planiruyut-relotsirovatsya-pochti-25-protsentov-studentov.html).

            But even if not all of the 25 percent saying they plan to leave do so, the fact that they are making such declarations in the course of a survey whose participants are likely to be identifiable to officials suggests a level of disaffection with the government among the next generation of the best educated that has to be worrisome to the authorities.

            And if as seems likely a sizeable proportion of that quarter do leave and if as seems possible given the upper trend line in this regard even more do, Russia will have lost much of the replacement generation for the best and the brightest.