Higher education in Russia Part I: History of the present
- CHAIR: Simon Marginson, University of Oxford
- SPEAKER: Isak Froumin, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation
- DISCUSSANT: Phil Altbach, Boston College, USA
- DISCUSSANT: Ellen Hazelkorn, Technological University Dublin, Ireland
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Higher education in Russia has seen immense ups and downs in the last forty years. Perestroika in the 1980s, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, triggered a period of liberalisation and internationalisation in academic culture but the 1990s also saw the defunding of much of the infrastructure of higher education, the loss of many science institutes and a talent exodus to the West. The Soviet system of free higher education was replaced by a semi-marketised policy in which half of the students paid fees, and local institutional autonomy was increased, though the ministry retained ultimate control. There was a great growth of enrolments, especially in ‘new economy’ domains such as business services and IT, and the overall rate of participation in tertiary education climbed rapidly, eventually becoming one of the highest in the world, despite poor and uneven quality in much of the sector. While many institutions inherited from the Soviet era struggled, certain new universities emerged, several with strong international links, which for a time was supported by the Government. Russia joined the Bologna process. In the 2000s funding began to improve and research in the universities started to recover. In 2013 the Government announced a new 5-100 Programme designed to lift the capacity and international profile of the leading institutions in Russia. Russia’s historical role as a large-scale attractor of international students from Ukraine and Centre Asia expanded. However, all was not well in higher education: investment in higher education and science remained modest, quality problems persisted in many institutions, the internationalisation of science was slowed by parochial habits and language barriers, and social and regional inequalities were significantly worse than in the Soviet period. After 2014 civil and political dissent triggered growing state pressures on students, staff and university rectors, and began to place the international links of the sector in question.
In this atmosphere of continuing problems and increasing repression, higher education institutions, along with the rest of Russian society, were suddenly plunged into crisis when the Russian government sent a large-scale invasion force into Ukraine on 24 February 2022. This CGHE webinar on 10 May will review the recent history and the state of play in the sector, and in its internationalisation, on the brink of the invasion. The webinar Higher education in Russia Part II on 23 June will discuss the situation in higher education since the invasion began.
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Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, Senior Research Fellow with Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and a Professorial Associate with the University of Melbourne. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the global science system, higher education in East Asia, the contributions of higher education and higher education as a public good, and higher education and social inequality. At Oxford he team teaches in the MSc Education pathway on Higher Education. Current books are Changing Higher Education in India (edited with Saumen Chattopadhyay and NV Varghese), and Changing Higher Education in East Asia (edited with Xin Xu), both published by Bloomsbury.
Professor Isak Froumin – fellow of the International Academy of Education – has been the Head of the Institute of Education at National Research University “Higher School of Economics” – from 2011 to 2022. He was also an Advisor to the Minister of Education and Science of Russian Federation (2012-2016). Before joining HSE he was a Lead Education Specialist in the World Bank.
Philip G. Altbach is Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, where from 1994 to 2015 he was the Monan University Professor. He was the 2004-2006 Distinguished Scholar Leader for the New Century Scholars initiative of the Fulbright program. He has taught at Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is author of Global Perspectives on Higher Education, Student Politics in America, among other books. He also co-edited (with Jamil Salmi) The Road to Academic Excellence, (with Michael Bastedo and Patricia Gumport) American Higher Education in the 21st Century, the International Handbook of Higher Education, and other books. He holds the B.A., M.A. and Ph.D degrees from the University of Chicago.
Ellen Hazelkorn is a member of the CGHE Research Management Committee and a CGHE Co-Investigator on Project 6, ‘The impact of locality and region on university governance’.
