Fursenko proposed reducing the number of budget places in universities

The Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Andrey Fursenko proposes to reduce the number of state-funded places in state universities in connection with the demographic "compression" in the country, RIA Novosti reports . The Minister stated this at a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.

Fursenko noted that the reform will become one of the sources for increasing the salaries of the teaching staff of universities.

“We must train at least 170 people per 10,000 people at the expense of the budget. But taking into account the aging of the population, we propose to change the norm and consider the training of specialists, not based on the total population, but on the basis of the so-called cohort, that is, the number of people who study,” Fursenko motivated his proposal. According to him, we are talking about people aged 17 to 35 years.

The minister noted that accordingly, it is necessary to recalculate the norm on state-funded places in universities, so that there is no "artificial pumping up of the number of state-funded places."

“Today, almost every second school graduate has the right to enroll in state-funded places. This was not the case either in the Soviet Union or in the post-Soviet years,” the head of the Ministry of Education and Science said.