Russia no longer needs so many graduates, country’s education minister warns — Novaya Gazeta Europe
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Students at Moscow State University attend their graduation ceremony in Moscow, 26 June 2025. Photo: EPA / MAXIM SHIPENKOVRussia’s labour market no longer requires the number of university graduates currently being produced, Russia’s Education and Science Minister Valery Falkov said on Thursday, noting that the demand for university places that had built up over recent decades simply no longer reflected the country’s economic reality.<br>“The demand for higher education, which has developed over decades, draws practically every school leaver into it,” Falkov told a technology conference in Moscow, adding that “a sensible balance is being struck between vocational and higher education. There is no need for such universal higher education from the point of view of the labour market.”<br>Though Russia boasted one of the best educated populations in the world during the Soviet era, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 saw standards plummet as higher education budgets were slashed, something that the government didn’t even begin to address until the early 2000s. Though funding for higher education was improved during the 2010s, corruption remained endemic and the country’s long-term brain drain continued to be felt.<br>Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia withdrew from the Bologna Process, which unifies academic standards between member state universities and had allowed Russian students access study programmes abroad. Moreover, within the first two years of the war, Novaya Europe calculated that at least 2,500 Russian scientists had left the country.<br>Last year, the Ministry of Education and Science cut 47,000 university places, or 13% of the previous total, including 28 different undergraduate degree programmes and 12 specialist degree programmes.<br>Since earlier this year, Russian universities have been increasingly militarised and have been actively recruiting students into the Unmanned Systems Forces, a relatively new branch of the military dedicated to drone warfare, with the Ministry of Education and Science reportedly setting each institution a quota of enlisting 2% of its student body to serve in the army.<br>In general, academic freedom in Russia has been systematically curtailed and ultimately crushed, and dozens of Russian researchers have been charged with treason for engaging in what at the time was perfectly legal cooperation with foreign institutions. Since 2023, at least eight leading Western universities have been officially classified as “undesirable organisations” by the government, making it illegal for them to operate in Russia in any capacity at all.
Tom Masters<br>Editor Novaya Gazeta Europe English
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