Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 3 – Since Putin became Kremlin leader, the share of secondary school graduates going on to the universities and the number of university students have both fallen, effectively closing off that important social escalator and leaving Russia ever further behind advanced countries, Nikolay Kulbaka says.
In Soviet times, officials twice worked to reduce these numbers out of concern that the USSR needed more workers and peasants rather than members of the intelligentsia, but this time around, the Moscow economist says, it isn’t certain whether this is the result of a conscious policy or a reflection of a lack of funds (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/rossia-vse-bolshe-otstaet-po-urovnju-obrazovania-ot-razvityh-stran-eto-sluchainost-ili-sistemnaja-politika).
On the one hand, the costs of going on to higher education have risen astronomically in recent years, putting such schooling beyond the reach of many; but on the other, the government has reduced the number and amount of scholarship support that could compensate for these price increases.
But as is most likely, the decline in the number of university students in Russia from seven million in 2010 to four million in 2020 and in the share of secondary school graduates going on to university from86 percent in 2019 to 60 percent in 2024 is the product of both factors, Kulbaka suggests.
These declines mean, he continues, that there will be fewer opportunities for young Russians to improve their social and economic standing by means of education and Russia itself will increasingly suffer as it faces a growing shortage of educated people and falls ever further behind other advanced countries in that regard.
If this trend continues for even five more years, Kulbaka says, this will lead to a situation in which Russia will be “fatally” behind these countries as far as the development of technology is concerned, a development which he describes as something “very sad.”
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