In an interview with RIA Novosti, Filippov dismissed rumors that allocations for higher education would be slashed in 2005. He put the misunderstanding down to the federal government's plans to
transfer 25 billion roubles of the higher education outlay (the U.S. dollar buys approximately 29 roubles, on current rates) to regional governments next year.
Some 2.5 billion roubles from the federal coffers is to be added to the scholarship fund this academic year, and colleges and universities will be able to decide for themselves how much more their students should be paid, Filippov said.
Also, the federal government is going to appropriate one billion roubles for the maintenance of college and university libraries and another billion for major repairs to dormitories, the Education Adviser said. As for teaching staffs' salaries, they will be raised as part of forthcoming inflation adjustments in the public sector.
Filippov acknowledged, however, that it was impossible to solve all the problems facing Russian schools overnight. He said that since the start of economic recession in 1988, almost no funds had been disbursed for the maintenance of schools. As a result, schools in Yakutia and Daghestan were hit by fires in the spring of 2003. The fire that broke out in a Yakut school on April 7 killed twenty-one children and an adult. Only days later, thirty lives were claimed by the blaze in a boarding school for children with hearing disabilities in the Daghestani capital of Makhachkala.
