Academic progress: College graduates will find it easier to enroll in universities
College graduates with three years of experience will have their way to universities simplified: a bill on benefits and out-of-competition admission will be submitted to the State Duma by July, Izvestia found out. The main goal is to ensure that vocational education does not become a dead end in education, increasing its attractiveness. Among the proposals of the deputies are non—competitive admission to related correspondence or full-time correspondence programs, free preparatory courses or quota enrollment. The issue of simplified college students obtaining a school diploma if they previously failed the OGE is also being discussed. How the vocational training system is being reformed and whether this will help overcome the shortage of personnel is in the Izvestia article.
New benefits for College graduates
The labor market in the Russian Federation is experiencing an acute shortage of skilled workers, engineering and medical professions. Both the government and the State Duma are confident that the problem can be solved by popularizing secondary vocational education (SPE). Special emphasis is placed on the target area, which assumes that a college graduate should immediately enter the labor market after graduation and work for several years in his specialty.
The State Duma has already passed several laws that simplify the admission of students to colleges. In order to further increase the attractiveness of targeted education in such institutions, deputies are developing a bill according to which special benefits are introduced for graduates of the vocational education system upon admission to the university, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Victoria Abramchenko told Izvestia.
— It is planned to develop a new educational trajectory for college graduates who have faithfully fulfilled their obligations under the target agreement. Now they have no formal advantages for continuing their studies at the university," the parliamentarian said. — In particular, it is planned to establish special rights for college graduates who have worked for at least three years under a targeted contract. This may be an out-of-competition enrollment in related correspondence or full-time correspondence programs. Or equate them with those who have special rights under Part 1 of Article 71 of Federal Law No. 273.
This article of the Federal Law specifies a number of benefits that socially vulnerable categories of citizens (orphans, the disabled, and so on), as well as members of their families and their children, can take advantage of. First of all, it is a quota system that accounts for 10% of the total number of applicants. It allows, for example, guaranteed admission to special operations veterans for training. Whether there will be quotas for graduates of the vocational education system is a matter of active discussion, so it's still premature to say for sure, Victoria Abramchenko said.
Among other potential benefits prescribed in the law is the right of first refusal. If several people with the same amount of points for entrance tests and individual achievements apply for a budget place, then priority is given to the beneficiary, that is, to the graduate of the vocational school, if this point is spelled out in the draft law. Another possible benefit is free tuition at university preparatory departments, where applicants are prepared for the Unified State Exam and entrance tests.
In addition to granting special rights to graduates of vocational schools, deputies are considering other privileges not specified in the aforementioned law. As Victoria Abramchenko stated, first of all, this is admission to a university without a general competition for correspondence or part-time programs in the same specialty. For example, a student who has graduated from an educational institution from the vocational education system under the Nursing program and has worked as a nurse for three years will be able to take advantage of the benefit if she wants to enroll in a full-time and part-time course at a medical university. To do this, she will not need to take the Unified State Exam. The university may only require passing internal exams if necessary.
At the same time, the educational program on which the student studied at college and the one on which he wants to go to university must coincide. To do this, we need to make some classifiers so that it is clear how the specialties of vocational education and higher education relate, says Irina Abankina, professor at the HSE Institute of Education.
— It is important that colleges are not a dead end in education. And if, after graduating from college in technical fields, students want to become technological engineers, they could study full-time and part-time without leaving their jobs. This would promote them, including in their careers," the expert explained in an interview with Izvestia.
Thus, the initiative will be able to open a real "social elevator" for young people, allowing them to get higher education without interrupting their careers. The document will be developed and submitted to Parliament before July, that is, before the end of the spring session. Today, the initiative is being actively discussed by the working group on secondary vocational education, headed by Victoria Abramchenko. In addition to deputies from all factions, the group includes representatives of interested departments, including the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor, as well as regional authorities.
The reform of the SPO system
The need to develop secondary vocational education in Russia is regularly discussed. The main reason is the shortage of free labor in the labor market. The share of enterprises experiencing a shortage of workers increased from 6% in 2019 to 37% in 2024, according to a study by the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Moscow alone lacks about 500,000 specialists in all sectors of the economy, the mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin, said earlier. According to him, before that, the education market was skewed: more specialists with higher education were trained, but people went to college much less often. Now the mayor's office is "trying to turn this pyramid around." At the same time, the number of working-age population will decrease by almost 6 million people by 2030, the Ministry of Labor reported.
"We need to continue working to improve the quality of training in the vocational education system, to achieve greater demand for graduates of colleges, technical schools, and universities in the labor market," Vladimir Putin stressed at a meeting of the State Council in December 2025.
The State Duma is working to establish effective control over the application of two recently adopted laws in the field of open source, Victoria Abramchenko explained to Izvestia.
The first one allows nine regions to participate in an experiment on college admissions based on two OGE. Despite the fact that the initiative makes it easier for ninth graders to enroll in colleges, it is fraught with risks. An increase in enrollment by 25% or more may require serious resource retrofitting of college classrooms and equipment, as well as an increase in the number of teachers. To avoid negative scenarios, the deputies will have to carefully calculate and organize the effective operation of educational systems in the regions.
The second law provides for the support of subjects where ninth graders who fail exams after grade 9 (about 40 thousand people per year) will be able to get a job for free at technical schools selected by local authorities. Together with their profession, they will master the school curriculum and receive a certificate. Such a step will require the regions to allocate additional funds, since the law guarantees obtaining a working specialty for free.
However, there are nuances that can significantly affect the effectiveness of this measure. It is impossible to issue certificates simply for passing vocational training, says Victoria Abramchenko.
— The optimal solution is to simplify the procedure for obtaining a certificate. In my opinion, such guys should take only two mandatory exams — Russian and mathematics (if both failed) or one of them (if the second one has already passed the required score). Today, the question of how exactly the process of retaking exams after vocational training will be organized is under discussion. The fate of many young Russians depends on this decision," the parliamentarian added.
There is another point of view — to retake all subjects that students did not pass on the OGE. For example, if four exams are not passed, retake all four, if three, it means three. The expert community believes that it will be enough for students of the vocational education system to retake two compulsory subjects, because the rest of the disciplines will be studied in detail in colleges anyway.
— The same physics and electronics, for example, are taught in technical schools already at an advanced level. This is more important and broader than the completeness of the school course, which, of course, is not focused in any way on the future profession," said Irina Abankina.
The final decision will be made in the form of an order from the Ministry of Education, which will approve the procedure for conducting the OGE for such students. Finally, the State Duma will soon adopt a law that will change the order of allocation of budget places in universities and colleges. At least 50% of these places will be intended for training in professions related to technological leadership. Thus, Abramchenko concluded, it will be possible to solve the personnel issues of 481 enterprises that participate in national projects to ensure it.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
