"The reforms we need are to sieve off inefficient educational programmes and focus government and private money to bolster up the efficient," he said to a Novosti news conference.
"Russia has not overcome critical educational developments. The crisis will get worse if we don't make due changes-mainly in financing. This crisis will surface as mass disillusionment as education fails to give the public well-paid jobs and an expected higher social status," warned Mr. Kuzminov.
Present-day government educational allocations are not enough by far. "They not merely do not suffice to improve education quality, and make it more competitive-they don't even promise to preserve what we have by now."
The Soviet Union allocated to education 5-6 per cent of its gross domestic product. Current Russian allocations make a mere 3.6 per cent-the smallest for developed countries on the OECD, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Rector pointed out.
The scissors between Russian and West European per student educational expenditures is double the per capita GDP scissors. "We are poor, true-but our education is even worse-off."
A government commission is working to improve budget allocation arrangements. The Higher School of Economics has offered it a number of goal-oriented indices to keep education competitive within and outside Russia. As School experts see it, secondary school teachers' average monthly wages are to rise from an abject present-day $120 to $600, and higher school assistant professors' from $300 to $1,100. Annual per student allocations are to grow from $700-800 to $2,300-3,500 for higher schools, $750 to $1,600 for vocational, and $400 to a thousand for general-educational secondary schools.
Russia is likely to afford such sums by 2010 if it keeps federal educational allocations at their current 3.6-4 per cent of the GDP, gross domestic product increase rests at an annual 6-7 per cent, and education and its financing see a structural reform, expects Yaroslav Kuzminov.
"It takes the federal top's political goodwill to effectively reform education and research-a target that demands consistent reforming and keeping up respective government allocation increase at due pace," he concluded.
