The reform of Russian education is advancing slowly, painfully, and not always effectively. Everyone knows about the problems of middle and higher schooling. In the last ten years the positions of Russian universities (except Moscow State University) continue to drop in the world rankings. How long the transition period in education will continue is not clear, but the Ministry of Education and Rosobrnadzor record progress in this process.
Summarizing the results of the admission campaign to the higher educational institutions of Russia, Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov stated: "The number of budget-funded places this year has been such that access to higher education for high school graduates has not been reduced in comparison with the previous year ... But compared to the level of last year, the total amount of budget-funded places has been increased in the natural sciences, engineering and medical fields of study in comparison with the previous year. Overall, 205,000 budget-funded places were distributed for these three groups. And despite the fact that the level of availability remained the same as last year, we recorded growth of competition for lower places. On average in Russia this competition was about 9 people per place. This is higher than last year."
According to Livanov, "Traditionally, there is high competition in specialties and directions in the field of foreign languages, international relations, economic, medical specialties. But we celebrate this year's increase in the growth of interest in engineering education, and what we are especially happy about is teacher education. This year, the competition for these specialties was about 7.5 people per place, which is significantly more than last year.
Traditionally, the highest competition for training in high schools, which are located in the regions where our leading universities are located, Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Tomsk region, the Sverdlovsk region, the Novosibirsk region, and others.
All the winners of the All-Russian Olympiad and champions of the Olympic and Paralympic Games entered universities, about 7 thousand people."
"For the first time, in accordance with the new law on education, the individual achievements of students were taken into account during this admission campaign. They are school portfolios, diplomas of the regional Olympiads, creative contests, school gold medals. According to the results of monitoring the admission campaign that was held, all the universities have used their right to account for individual achievements. There was an opportunity among the individual achievements to consider the achievements and results of the final composition work, which eleventh-graders wrote in December 2014," Livanov said.
The average exam enrollment was 65.2 in 2015. This is 0.8 points higher than the average last year. The average GPA exam of the universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg was, respectively, 74.2 and 74.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Head of Rosobrnadzor, Alexander Biserov, had to admit that violations are still detected during inspections of higher educational institutions: "This is due to wrongly composed admission rules. It does not meet the requirements of the law of the contract of paid educational services. It is inadequate informing of the students about the admission campaign, as well as disorders associated with the transfer of data to the federal information system of final examination and acceptance. And there were still infringements related to the organization of conditions for people with disabilities."
However, Biserov noted that with every year the number and volume of violations decreases: "If in 2013 the administrative responsibility for violation of the campaign was involved in 75 universities, in the past year we have gone to 58 high schools for such violations. So now, to date, only 39 universities have been brought to administrative responsibility."
According to the Deputy Head of Rosobrnadzor: "The quality of the admission campaign is growing every year, because the appeals of citizens, which actually contain facts about violations during the admission campaign, have reduced. Every year there are fewer of them. There are applications, but in some cases the applicants did not carefully read the legislation, they have to pay more attention to this when they receive and read the admission rules, look at the license, accreditation."
