Dream reform: minus 500 programs and not a single C student at the university

The Ministry of Education and Science will no longer allocate fee-paying places in programs where the average Unified State Exam score for contract students is below 50. Novye Izvestia calculated that this will affect 534 of the 4,483 programs at 232 universities across the country— 11.9% of all programs that were recruiting students. And these aren't "gray" colleges, but legitimate higher education institutions—from Moscow institutes to major regional universities. These programs enrolled approximately 6,200 students in 2024.

Ten universities in Moscow are at risk, according to data from the 2024 university admissions monitoring study (the latest available data). These include:

The list of fields in which paid training will no longer be possible is staggering: from economics and management to computer science, ecology, public administration, and aviation and rocket and space technology.

That is, it is not the “exotic” professions that are disappearing, but those that form the foundation of the economy and urban infrastructure.

In St. Petersburg, the situation is even more dramatic: 16 universities were blacklisted, including St. Petersburg State University, where the average score in the Nursing program was exactly 50. Also at risk are St. Petersburg State Technical University, Voenmekh, ETU "LETI," the State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping, the First St. Petersburg State Medical University named after Academician I.P. Pavlov, the University of Civil Aviation, the St. Petersburg State Transport University, and others.

It will not be able to train specialists in the fields of armaments, services, water transport management, agriculture and fisheries, architecture and urban planning, marine engineering, energy and power engineering, geodesy and land management.

Provincial universities are facing the knife. In Ulan-Ude, Buryat State University risks losing its political science and special education teachers. In Tomsk, the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering is without construction workers. Amur State University is without economists. Volgograd State Agricultural University is without its key program, Agriculture and Fisheries. And Udmurt State University in Izhevsk is without teachers. Across the country, from Vladivostok to Dagestan, entire programs in which regional universities have trained specialists for decades are being closed.

At first glance, it seems like the Ministry of Education and Science is simply raising the bar. But in reality, the consequences could be devastating.

Higher education will become less accessible. Not all applicants can afford expensive tuition in the capital or at top universities with high scores. For many families, it's simply too expensive! Fee-paying tuition at regional universities was the only chance to earn a degree for those who didn't earn millions. Now that chance will simply be taken away.

But this isn't the main consequence of the reform. Consider the fields of study that applicants with low scores entered: teachers, special education teachers, nurses, and foresters. These are low-prestige and low-paying professions, for which there is already a shortage of personnel. The country risks soon being left without them. Who will build roads, develop environmental projects, and work in agriculture if these fields simply disappear from universities?