Tertiary (university level) education

According to a 2005 UNESCO report, more than half of the Russian adult population has attained a tertiary education.

As of the 2007–2008 academic year, Russia had 8.1 million students enrolled in all forms of tertiary education (including military and police institutions and postgraduate studies). Foreign students accounted for 5.2% of enrollment, half of whom were from other CIS countries. 6.2 million students were enrolled in 658 state-owned and 450 private civilian university-level institutions licensed by the Ministry of Education.

The number of state-owned institutions was rising steadily from 514 in 1990 to 655 in 2002 and remains nearly constant since 2002. The number of private institutions, first reported as 193 in 1995, continues to rise. The trend for consolidation began in 2006 when state universities and colleges of Rostov-on-Don,Taganrog and other southern towns were merged into Southern Federal University, based in Rostov-on-Don; a similar conglomerate was formed in Krasnoyarsk as Siberian Federal University; the third one emerged in Vladivostok as Far Eastern Federal University. Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University acquired the federal university status in 2007 without further organisational changes.

Traditional model

Historically, civilian tertiary education was divided between a minority of traditional wide curriculum universities and a larger number of narrow specialization institutes (including art schools). Many of these institutes, such as the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, and the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, are concentrated primarily in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Institutes whose graduates are in wide demand throughout Russia, such as medical and teachers' institutes, are spread more evenly across the country. Institutes in geographically specific fields will tend to be situated in areas serving their specialties. Mining and metallurgy institutes are located in ore-rich territories, and maritime and fishing institutes are located in seaport communities.

Medical education originally developed within universities, but was separated from them in 1918 and remains separate as of 2008. Legal education in Russia exists both within universities and as standalone law institutes such as the Academic Law University (Russian: Академический правовой университет, АПУ) founded under the auspices of the Institute of State and Law. In the 1990s many technical institutes and new private schools created their own departments of law; as of 2008, law departments trained around 750 thousands students.

In the 1990s the institutes typically renamed themselves universities, while retaining their historical narrow specialisation. More recently, a number of these new private 'universities' have been renamed back to 'institutes' to reflect their narrower specialization. Thus, for instance, the Academic Law University has recently (2010) been renamed to the Academic Law Institute.

In these institutes, the student's specialisation within a chosen department was fixed upon admission, and moving between different streams within the same department was difficult. Study programmes were (and still are) rigidly fixed for the whole term of study; the students have little choice in planning their academic progress. Mobility between institutions with compatible study programmes was allowed infrequently, usually due to family relocation from town to town.

Unlike the United States or Bologna process model, Russian higher education was traditionally not divided into undergraduate (bachelors) and graduate (masters) levels. Instead, tertiary education was undertaken in a single stage, typically five or six years in duration, which resulted in a specialist degree. Specialist degrees were perceived equal to Western MSc/MA qualification. A specialist graduate needed no further academic qualification to pursue a real–world career, with the exception of some (but not all) branches of medical professions that required a post-graduate residency stage. Military college education lasted four years and was ranked as equivalent to specialist degree.

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