Education in Russia: News

Just as an aside - Switzerland makes a lot of unique technology; for watch/clock mechanisms, and all the machinery and so on that they use to make it - it's the best in the world.
Then you have their infrastructure, military infrastructure too - which is quite impressive.

Russia’s top universities to launch unified student recruitment center

Falling ruble entails higher costs of education in Russia

The prices for education in Russia have increased by 30% and some institutes have even switched over to fees charged in hard currency, first deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on education says

MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/. The falling ruble exchange rate has triggered 30-35% hikes in cost of higher education in Russia, and some of the institutes have even switched over to education fees charged in hard currency, First deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on education Vladimir Burmatov confirmed at the State Duma on Monday, citing the results of first inquiries opened after complaints had been lodged.

"Institute administrations are not in the least embarrassed to release official new price lists on their websites, indicating the new prices in hard currency, or currency symbols, which is inadmissible in principle," Burmatov said. He also expressed surprise that the Science and Education Ministry did nothing to improve the situation and even denied the facts.

A maximum high cost of education — 35% up the previous amount, was reported at University of State Management which is subordinate to the Science and Education Ministry. The Moscow Fedorov State University of the Press followed suit, increasing first grade full time education for a bachelor's degree in 2015 by 29% University of People's Friendship has increased the cost of education at a pharmaceutical department of a medical faculty by 28%.

"Inflation rates went up by 11.4% last year, while the cost of education has been three times as much now," Burmatov said. He urged Duma deputies to find out the reason for such escalation of education prices. "We will turn over the data available to FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service) and the Federal Service for Supervision of Education and Science. As regards the new price lists, where prices are indicated in currency symbols, we will have to open Prosecutor's checks," Burmatov said.

The education system has absolutely nothing to do with exchange rates. There is some real hard time corruption going on there. Maybe purge these institutes or threaten them, cause the value of ruble to USD has nothing to do with education.

Actually, isnt all education covered by the state, even university?

sepheronx wrote:

Actually, isnt all education covered by the state, even university?

in former USSR yes, in Russia i haven't searched

sepheronx wrote:The education system has absolutely nothing to do with exchange rates. There is some real hard time corruption going on there. Maybe purge these institutes or threaten them, cause the value of ruble to USD has nothing to do with education.

Actually, isnt all education covered by the state, even university?

This is truly disgusting. I would expect some shady shop owners or resellers to jack up prices "pod shumok" of the FX rate drop,
but Universities? WTF. Do they have dollar costs? None that I have ever heard of. Their staff are paid in rubles and they
do not import anything that could explain a 30% jump in tuition.

The rot that flourished under Yeltsin is still there. A purge is badly needed.

Time for a purge of university deans & administrators.

And by purge I mean of course purge by fire

Will Moscow State University become another Russian ‘Silicon Valley?’

I'm finishing school next year so I'm wondering in which universities to go. Russian education is definately the second top on my list after a US state university  since I want to study either material sciences, aerospace,  or nuclear engineering and as far as I know Russia's adptness with these subjects is world class. I'm also familiar with the culture, people and almost completely understand and I'm gradually improving at speaking the language.

I may just be one of the few bulgarians that heads east instead of west.

Unfortunately Bulgarian unis are out of the question since our education standards(apart from some humantitarian or historical disciplines) have fallen massively since the bourgeois counterrevolution.

If there was still a USSR I would've definately gone there but the problem is that russia's higher education severely degraded after the coming of capitalism, and I heard the equipment and faculty is obsolete. Is this true? If yes then the US would be the most likely option not to mention my very russophobic parents want me there.

However when it comes to Russian unis, the ones I know of, NIMI seems most attractive for me and also MAI or TsAGI if they still exist. Any other suggestions  for good Russian unis that are on par with US or EU ones?

I have some questions also about acceptance

What is the form of the acceptance test(s)? Do foreigners get to do the same one(s) that russian citizens? Are they standardized and have generally simple essays and questions like SAT or do they also include advanced material?
What is the importance of high school grades? Are they secondary in importance to acceptance tests(like the US) or vice versa?
What is the situation of the tuition fees and student loans? Russia fortunately gave free tuitions to students from east europe including Bulgaria but I don't know if this still is in effect given the idiotic actions of our neolibral bourgeois puppet government.
Does graduating higher education in Russia make it easier for me to gain citizenship?
About how  close to a perfect 5 do I have to score to get accepted in the russian universities that are top 100 in the world?
Are   bullshit credentials like being a football player or a regional math champion looked upon in Russian unis like in the US?

PS. didn't see the russian education thread. Can you move my post there?

If I get accepted in a Russian university and also become a russian citizen do I have to become a conscript before I start my courses?

I can't post links so just copy and paster in any Internet browser:

Lomonosov Moscow State University Information for applicants

The Training and Testing Language Center for Foreigners of the MSU conducts certification exams in the framework of the Russian State Testing System of Russian as a Foreign Language (TORFL)

The first link is probably the correct one.

St Petersburg University of IT Mechanics and Optics has won the IBM collegiate programming contest (really mathematical algorithm). Russian universities have won 7 of the last 10 years and usually dominate the top 10 places. Even small schools like Saratov University have won. This is a product of the legacy of Soviet math/science education that sycophantic Russian liberals arre trying to replace with "western" style education reforms.

Russia win ever yr it easy

MIT Hovard Caltec no differ

Russia edu beat  

calripson wrote:St Petersburg University of IT Mechanics and Optics has won the IBM collegiate programming contest (really mathematical algorithm). Russian universities have won 7 of the last 10 years and usually dominate the top 10 places. Even small schools like Saratov University have won. This is a product of the legacy of Soviet math/science education that sycophantic Russian liberals arre trying to replace with "western" style education reforms.

The irony is that these competitions that represent a countries best universities, almost always have Russians representing Russian universities, where as the American universities have Chinese and Indian nationals representing them, and those nationals are declared 'American' when it's deemed necessary   , but when also deemed necessary could be labeled 'foreign spies'.

The other irony is that these Schools are not part of the prestigious "rankings" of top 10. So goes to show that the rankings are full of shit.

And yet US R&D spending % of GDP is lowest among OECD nations .

Walther von Oldenburg wrote:American universities aren't that great at undergrad/grad level - so it makes very little difference wherever you study at MiT or Moscow State University.

It is at postgrad level that US system shines - research, research and once again research. That's why so many of the world's most briliant people ultimately end up working in the US.

<Computer science was literally created at MIT>

And guess where one of the largest market bubble resides? Sillicon valley.

Walther von Oldenburg wrote:American universities aren't that great at undergrad/grad level - so it makes very little difference wherever you study at MiT or Moscow State University.

It is at postgrad level that US system shines - research, research and once again research. That's why so many of the world's most briliant people ultimately end up working in the US.

<Computer science was literally created at MIT>

Soviets had plenty of inventions and firsts to their name; w/o the slanted uni rankings being biased to their favour.
In computing/robotics/microelectronics too, for example:
- The first ternary computer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun
- Data structures & algorithms; Levenshtein distance, Self-balancing binary search trees, GOST block cypher, etc...
- Automated space docking systems
- Planetary exploration rovers
- Heterojunctions
- Automated, unmanned resupply spacecraft
- Various record-breaking mainframes & supercomputers (BESM, M-100, MESM, Minsk, Kiev, ES-2701)
- Indirect Memory Addressing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_programming_language
- High-level mathematical based languages/hardware architectures (ANALITIK language on the MIR computer)
- Early PC and user interface innovations (MIR computer)
- Some of the earliest experimentation, simulations of and research into AI, image recognition, pattern recognition (late 50s-early 60s on the Kiev computer)
- First Relational Database Management System (Avtodirektor)
- Unique multiprocessor architectures (Kronos, Elbrus)

And this isn't counting military computing, electronic and robotic systems of which there were plenty. A lot of innovation was involved with air-defence systems, anti-ship missile systems, ballistic missile systems, communication systems, submarine decoy systems, etc...

I remember hearing on how the Buran launched, orbited and performed a landing completely under automation w/o being manned by a single man. It landed on a runway under a 34mph crosswind (that would have ruled out any landing of the US Shuttle, BTW), within 3 metres of the centre-line.
Yet the US wants you to believe that Soviet computer technology was crap

Although it's indisputable that Russia's higher education system had fallen a long way since its Soviet hey-day.

BTW, fun fact: Bulgaria once supplied some 40% of the entire Eastern Bloc's computers; some 300,000 people there were working in this sector.
And now there are not even fossils left of Bulgaria's once-mighty computer manufacturing industry. I guess the EU excuse for it would be 'inefficient Soviet practises' or 'non-competitive industries',etc...

Yet another example of 'Russian Brain Drain'   :

The winner of the Google Code Jam became Gennady Karatkevich


...A couple key points:

"Gennady Karatkevich successfully participates in the Google Code Jam is the third time. A year ago, a student of the University ITMO also won the title of the winner, and in 2013 he managed to get to the final."

"Note that a week earlier Gennady Karatkevich became a triple winner of the world championship for sports programming Yandex.Algorithm. In addition, Gennady - a two-time champion of the international programming contest ACM ICPC (2013, 2015). And the winner of the tournament Facebook Hacker Cup, Russian Code Cup and Topcoder Open."

Any thoughts from kvs, or sepheronx?

None comes as a surprise. Russians are some of the most educated people in the world, thanks to things like subsidized education. The education system may be loated and eith problems, but seems to have no problem churning out brilliant minds.

sepheronx wrote:None comes as a surprise. Russians are some of the most educated people in the world, thanks to things like subsidized education. The education system may be loated and eith problems, but seems to have no problem churning out brilliant minds.

One of the key things today is that there is no ideology stifling Russia. Russia has a lot of pent up creative energy and it will
go far. This is one of the reasons why the US-led NATO is trying to bring Russia down. The open policy of the USA is to
prevent the formation of any serious rival. Russia is a serious rival and thus a "threat".

Ten Russia’s universities are in top-200 in world RUR ranking

By the teaching criteria, Lomonosov Moscow state University got 67 rank above last year’s 80 place

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/. The Round University Ranking (RUR), world's leading university rankings run on Thomson Reuters data, has assessed ten Russian Universities in top-200, the press service told TASS on Wednesday.

By the teaching criteria, Lomonosov Moscow state University got 67 rank above last year’s 80 place. Bauman Moscow State Technical University is ranked 106, followed by Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (143 place). Moscow Aviation Institute gained 155 rank, while Tomsk Polytechnic University is on 179 place. St Petersburg State University closes Russian Universities in top-200 on 189 rank.

World-famous California Institute of Technology is on the first place, followed by Harvard University and Stanford University.

The RUR, a world university ranking with headquarter office in Russia, is assessing effectiveness of leading universities in the world. The system measures the efficiency of universities by 20 individual indicators grouped into 4 areas: Teaching, Research, International Diversity, and Financial Sustainability.

Since RUR creation in 2010, 750 universities from 76 countries, including 27 from Russia, are presented in the ranking lists.

As someone who had certain experience with US academic circles, lemmi explain why people around the globe belive Stanford, MIT and similar institutions are the "best". USA colleges have habit of offering and paying education to exceptional young kids around the globe, so they grab exceptional Chinese kids, exceptional Indian kids, Serbian, Russian, Turkish doesnt even matter, and they give them good education and they after college being smart and exceptional as they are do great things in their fields, and whenever someone asks them "what college did you attend" and he says "MIT" everyone is like "Dammnnn, good college". However most of the Americans that attend such college are quite average for our standards but they have money to pay schoolarship, so, naturally there are exceptional kids in the US that get free schoolarship too, but they do have significant number of imbeciles that are there simply coz they have the money.

When its about Russian institutions i wish i had chance to study at Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет информационных технологий, механики и оптик, but who knows i might try going for PhD there

Guys,being a teacher myself I have a question:

Looking at sdelanounas I noticed huge amount of brand new kindergartens, schools, student dorms and sport facilities being opened every single day.

Is this usual pace or is there some big reconstruction program going on right now?