Education and Society

Education plays a crucial role in determining social status in Russia. People who leave school after 9 years generally can find only unskilled jobs. Even those who complete secondary education may rise no higher than skilled labor or low-level white-collar work. A college or university education is necessary for most professional and bureaucratic positions and appears to be highly desirable for a position of political power.

For example, a very high percentage of the members of Russia’s parliament are university graduates. Access to higher education is roughly proportionate to the social and financial situation of an individual’s family. Children whose parents have money and status usually have an advantage in gaining admission to an institution of higher education.

The reasons lie not only with the parents’ possible influence and connections but increasingly with the better quality of primary and secondary education that has become available to such children, enhancing their ability to pass difficult university entrance examinations. Moreover, such families can afford to hire tutors for their children in preparation for the exams and can more readily afford to pay university tuition in case the children do not receive stipends.

By the mid-1990s, the new phenomenon of individual commercial success began influencing the attitude of Russian society toward education and its goals. At the same time, the last generation of Soviet-educated Russians was finding itself ill prepared to deal with a new set of conditions for social and economic survival. In the new order, acquisition of money is much more important for both self-respect and practical survival, and career prestige by itself is of relatively less worth than it was in the Soviet system, where every career label ensured a known level of comfort. Significantly, in post-Soviet years, the phrase «to make money» has passed into common usage in colloquial Russian.

Together with the employment insecurity felt in the 1990s by well-educated Russians, the new values have dampened the educational ambitions of many, particularly with regard to higher education. Although older Russians resent those who achieve commercial success in the new «system», the generation now in school shows increasing interest in advancement in the private sector of the economy. At the same time, polls show that education ranks only ninth among the most pressing concerns of Russians.

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