The College Student Today

There is a widespread notion that higher education in Russia these days is gradually degenerating and, in particular, that young people are rushing chiefly to run the commercial kiosks rather than to enroll in college. However, statistical figures and the leadership of the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation refute this view. In 1996 there were 216 applicants for every 100 places in institutions of higher learning (versus 217 in 1990). The greatest competition was for enrollment in the economics and juridical colleges and institutions (three applicants per place). The professions with the highest prestige are: diplomat (33 percent of tuition-paying students among the total number of first-year students), merchant (35 percent), executive (28 percent), and artist or designer (17 percent). But the critics just won't quit: Young people, they say, are going to college only because they simply don't have anything else to do. The fact that such a surge in competition would come in the second half of the 1990s was being talked about at the beginning of the decade.