What room for innovation? Russia's education ministry presents a stand at "Open technologies" show in Moscow. (c) Grigory Sysoev / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.Russia’s higher education sector is braced for significant cuts, with up to 10, 300 jobs disappearing. At the end of July 2016, the online Gazeta.ru daily published an article saying that by 2019 over 10,000 academic and research posts would be lost at Russian universities and institutes, including the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kurchatov Institute, as well as the number of state-funded university places for students.
Russia’s ministry of education and science rushed to deny that this is happening, but many teachers are sceptical: a constantly increasing workload and fall in real income, combined with the introduction of yearly contracts and problems with holiday pay suggest that further financial cutbacks are on their way.
In mid-August, Russia’s education minister Dmitry Livanov was reassigned as the president’s trade envoy to Ukraine. As Olga Vasilyeva, Livanov’s replacement, prepares her plans, it’s useful to ask: what is the current state of higher education in Russia?
