Russia’s Minister of Science and Higher Education, Valery Falkov, said that the universal push for a university degree does not correspond to the needs of the economy and the labor market. According to him, the mass demand for higher education built up over decades means that almost any school graduate goes to university, and he argued that this model is misguided.
“The demand for higher education formed over decades draws practically any school graduate there. This is not good, this is not right. A reasonable rebalancing is now taking place between secondary vocational and higher education. There is no such need for total higher education from the point of view of the labor market,” the minister said.
Reduction in paid places
In November 2025, the Ministry of Education and Science defined a list of specialties for which admission to paid programs would be allowed only in numbers approved by the government. The list included 28 bachelor’s programs and 12 specialist-degree programs.
The ministry later reported that this led to a reduction of 47,000 paid places at Russian higher education institutions, equal to 13% of the total.
Tuition growth and other changes
The cost of the first year on paid programs at Russian universities in 2026 increased by an average of 10.7%. Experts believe this was influenced by the restriction on the number of paid places. They also forecast that tuition costs will continue to rise in the coming years.
Against this backdrop, Russian universities reportedly began active campaigning early this year to recruit people into drone forces. The outlet Faridaily wrote that the ministry had tasked university rectors with sending at least 2% of students to the war in Ukraine.
After the start of the war, Russia withdrew from the Bologna system, which had allowed universities to integrate into the European education space and enabled Russian students to go on exchange to Western universities or continue their studies there. The country then launched a project to restore the domestic specialist degree in place of the Western bachelor’s and master’s system. In addition, since 2023, at least eight Western educational institutions have been added to the “undesirable” register, including six located in the United States. The latest additions included Stanford, Tufts University, Berkeley, and George Washington University.