They don't want to study

As it turns out, the government did not plan to reduce the number of budget-funded places in universities out of a desire to increase cash flows from the education sector to the treasury. According to the director of the Department of Economics and Finance of the Ministry of Education and Science, Andrei Petrov, the decision was due to objective reasons and “taking into account the demographic factor” - a significant decrease in the number of school graduates. As the ministry notes, enrollment in universities may decline by 25-30% by 2010.