MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Olga Sobolevskaya.)
Russia educates some 100,000 foreign students a year and its share on the international market in terms of foreign students is 5% at most.
Its annual returns from this are $150-$200 million, a mere 0.5% of the global market of education services.
Of the above 100,000 foreigners, 70,000 pay for their education and the rest study on federal grants. Russia mostly trains students from China, India, South Korea, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Baltic countries, as well as young Russians who live permanently in Europe. All of them are eager to get a Russian education, primarily in natural sciences, where Russia's traditions of education have long become a brand. Russian physicists, chemists, biologists and some medical specialists easily find well-paid employment abroad.
This is also true of programming specialists, especially since the leading Russian universities have launched tuition in information technologies.
But the countries that have traditionally sent students to Russia, in particular China and India, have found their bearings in the world education system. The number of foreign students in China has increased tenfold to 50,000 since 1990. In addition, Chinese and Indian young people now prefer to study in the United States, although a year of tuition would cost them $2,000-$5,000 in Russia, $15,000-$25,000 in the US, and $12,000-$20,000 in UK.
Fundamental education is the main asset of Russia. It must maintain its high standards if it wants to promote education exports in conditions of tough competition. Five years in a Russian university are enough to thoroughly study a specialty and become an expert in the chosen field (medics, physicists and members of some other professions study longer). A bachelor's degree abroad does not provide such a scope.
Russia joined the Bologna process of harmonising European higher education degree systems in 2003 and since then has been adjusting its education to the Western bachelor-master system. The rectors of many Russian universities are deeply worried that this might erode the Russian system of fundamental education and hence its competitiveness.
Adjusting a five-year tuition programme to four years (for a bachelor's degree) means simplifying it or even excluding several major subjects. The purpose of education to a bachelor degree is not to train a specialist but to provide a general education in a subject, which the student may want to improve by studying two more years for a master's degree. Russia started experimenting with two-level education in the early 1990s. The innovator was the economics department of Moscow Lomonosov State University.
Experts say that Russia should introduce the "four plus two" system more extensively because it needs specialists as soon as possible and wants Russian degrees to be recognised abroad. The conversion to the bachelor-master system might prove difficult, but Russia badly needs to modernise the education system and adjust it to the requirements of potential clients.
Minister of Education and Science Andrei Fursenko said, "We should find a balance between pragmatic attitudes and fundamental issues." Some universities are conducting market surveys, studying trends on the international educational market, setting up centres for international education projects, buying modern training equipment, and adopting modern technologies.
Russia is only introducing one of such technologies - distance education. Free access to the Internet is still a luxury for many universities that do not have enough computers. The branches of Russian universities abroad (both Moscow-based and regional universities are opening them now) have not taken a firm stand on the market. Expansion is a task to be tackled in the future.
Medicine is the most popular specialty for foreigners in Russia (19.2%), while 17.5% study economics, finance and management, and 15.6% humanities and social sciences. Also popular are engineering and technical subjects, natural sciences and mathematics. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, foreign students prefer to study engineering and medicine in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other universities of the European part of Russia. They get humanities degrees mostly in regional universities and acquire the professions of manager and economist in Moscow universities. The right to receive free education is granted only to the young foreign winners of various competitions in the Russian language and country studies.
In line with international treaties, 170 Russian universities of the Education and Science Ministry trained foreigners from 98 CIS and non-CIS countries using federal money and their countries' grants in 2005. Fifty universities in Moscow and 14 in St. Petersburg are involved in the programme. The universities that are not incorporated into the Ministry's system of education, such as Moscow State University, the Finance Academy at the Russian government, and universities of other ministries and departments (about 20 in all), also train foreign students on federal grants.
There have been positive changes in the interest in studying the Russian language abroad, following ten years of indifference. The number of Russian language students in China has nearly doubled this year, and now about half a million Chinese speak Russian. The leading Russian universities have preparatory Russian language courses for foreigners who do not speak Russian but plan to study here. After entering universities, they continue studying the language at special departments.
Moscow State University has special departments where Russian is taught as a foreign language to foreign humanities and science students. They issue specialised literature and recommend attending daily lessons on different aspects of the Russian language. Most students there are Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and Arabs, although some are Europeans and Americans. Moscow State University also has summer language courses for those who would like to study Russian for travelling around the country.
However, language courses for foreigners should be promoted more energetically and teaching materials on CD-ROMs should be produced in foreign languages. Since there are foreign students in every big city in Russia, the education infrastructure should be improved too, with students' residences modernised or overhauled.
Experts say that new subjects, such as information technologies, bioengineering and biotechnologies, will attract more foreign students to Russia. Many state and private universities here offer tuition in these subjects. Vladimir Sukhomlin, a professor at Moscow State University, has developed methods of IT tuition. A system of training IT lecturers is being created and the first such centre has been opened at Nizhni Novgorod State University. The state universities of Nizhni Novgorod, Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM, which has a distance learning centre) are working out standards for IT bachelor's and master's degrees.
Russia and India launched a comprehensive long-term programme of research and technical cooperation in 1987. In July 2000, an autonomous non-profit Russo-Indian Centre of Computer Studies (led by Academician Oleg Belotserkovsky) was established in line with intergovernmental documents. The Centre will become a multi-level "bridge" facilitating Russo-Indian research, technological, economic and humanities cooperation. In particular, it should promote Russian and Indian scientific achievements and advance technologies in the two countries and in other countries of the world, and encourage the educational communities to take up new technologies.
Russia has youth exchange programmes with 30 countries, including the United States, Germany, India, Finland, Estonia, Belgium and South Korea. They are monitored by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science and include language exchanges, joint leisure pursuits and friendly ties, as well as exchange of specialists.
The Russian Council on Academic Mobility (RCAM) also facilitates international exchange of students, teachers, ideas and educational experience. The Council is a voluntary association of Russian universities and other educational establishments modelled after the British Council, the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD, EduFrance and other transnational educational organisations.
However, all of the above efforts have proved insufficient now. Russia needs an organisation that would energetically lobby the national educational interests abroad and rally Russian universities that are emerging on the world markets. This is an issue of state importance, since education is a crucial ideological and economic resource.
