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Students of settlement: why the Federation Council calls for reducing the admission of applicants from the regions to universities
Valentina Matvienko proposed to reduce the number of fee-paying students in unclaimed areas at universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan. At the same time, the speaker of the Federation Council called for an emphasis on regional higher education institutions. Moreover, she recalled, there are instructions from the president to create a series of campuses across the country. How these measures will help stop the outflow of young people "from the hinterland" is described in the Izvestia article.
With Khrushchev's directness
At a meeting on the organization of the work of the Presidential Council on Demographic and Family Policy, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko said that students from the regions studying at universities in the capital "will not return to their homes after graduation," so it is necessary to reduce their admission.
During the global economic crisis, universities "began without any reason, just thoughtlessly increasing the admission of students to paid tuition and churning out specialists in professions that were not needed," she said. Matvienko added that "instead of the success story that parents had hoped for when sending a child from the countryside to study in Moscow, it turned out to be a story of losers who go to work as managers of what I call a retail chain."
As explained to Izvestia in the press service of the Chamber of Regions, Valentina Matvienko proposes to reduce enrollment in higher education institutions for unclaimed professions within five years. At the same time, it is necessary to ensure that more applicants want to receive higher education in the regions where they grew up and live. Then the birth rate there will gradually increase.
Izvestia asked for the position of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation on this issue.
How to reduce the number of low-skilled workers
The problem raised by Matvienko requires an integrated approach, says the director of the Phystech School of Biological and Medical Physics at MIPT (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) Denis Kuzmin. The main point is that there are applicants from the regions who, having failed to enroll in budget places at strong universities or in highly competitive areas, choose contract studies at metropolitan universities in "cheap", and therefore less in demand, specialties from not the strongest universities. This leads to the fact, Kuzmin believes, that they receive an education that does not always meet the demands of the labor market, and as a result join the ranks of low-skilled workers or the unemployed in large cities.
— It is worth mentioning right away that the problem of mass migration of young people from the regions to the capitals is not acute in our country, — says the MIPT expert. — For the majority of school graduates, local universities remain comfortable, especially if they offer high-quality education and employment prospects.
According to him, there are well–known examples when a region creates a school–university-industry educational hub. These are primarily the Tyumen Region, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, and Yamal.
— Of course, it is possible to legally prohibit anyone from the province from entering universities in large cities, but it is not necessary, - says Grigory Shabanov, vice—rector for Academic Affairs at the Russian New University. — Firstly, this will limit the right of applicants to receive a high-quality education, and secondly, this approach contradicts the ideas of the Unified State Exam, which we have been constantly talking about for almost 20 years. After all, we have been saying for a long time that thanks to the Unified State Exam, everyone, wherever they are, can enroll in any university in the country, having scored the required number of points.
But this problem can still be solved by creating targeted places for the best students and providing them with the best conditions for studying at regional universities, Shabanov notes.
Finally, regional universities may specialize in a particular field. In other words, to become an oilman or a mining engineer, it is not necessary to go to Moscow to study, this may well be taught in those regions where this industry is well developed, the expert emphasizes.
According to the vice-rector, it is possible to organize paid tuition at the expense of an organization that sends a person to a university and has the right to expect that he will return home and work in his specialty.
Evgeny Kopaev, lecturer at the Russian Society for Knowledge, Associate Professor of the Department of Integrated Communications and Advertising at the Russian State University of Economics, nevertheless believes that this state of affairs is beneficial for educational institutions, as it is "living money" with which current tasks can be solved, including economic ones, such as updating the classroom fund. Universities have even introduced the concept of "retention of the contingent", that is, a more loyal attitude towards "payers" during the interim assessment in order to minimize the reduction in students, the expert noted.
Young people lack sustainable confidence in the regions
Sergey Tolkachev, Professor of the Department of Economic Theory at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, recalls that the wave of popularity of training "lawyers and economists" in universities occurred in the 2000s, and since the early 2010s and now there has been a gradual decline in mass interest in these professions.
"But the problem is that the lack of stable confidence of modern youth in their career paths in the regions, especially where once-advanced industries have disappeared or degraded, encourages them to somehow cling to Moscow, sometimes not by profession," Tolmachev argues. — Moscow, which is constantly growing in all its scales, is fueling this process and is currently absorbing new young human resources.
Irina Orlova, PhD, head of the online school UniversItalia, believes that retaining talented young people in the regions can lead to a restriction of their social mobility. In her opinion, the reduction of places for admission on a fee-based basis does not guarantee that regional universities will train more in-demand specialists.
"On the contrary, this may lead to young people either going abroad or receiving lower—quality education at local universities without access to leading research centers and teaching staff," she suggests.
Orlova notes that the problem of overproduction of specialists lies not only in the large number of graduates, but also in the lack of a close relationship between the needs of the labor market and the educational system. It is important that employers' requests correspond to the distribution of university graduates.
Head of the Reception Department at the Institute of International Economic Relations (IMEC) Kristina Kolesnikova believes that reducing enrollment in large regions will not change the situation. Strict restrictions are not a way out of the situation, but only problems of a different nature, she argues. According to her, the regions need to pursue a serious development strategy, taking into account the views of the younger generation.
In addition, it is important for universities and regions to join forces on joint staff training. In the meantime, we are witnessing rivalry and struggle for applicants, she concluded.
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