Tough new requirements for foreign students

Russia’s Ministry of Education and Science has set out a list of strict new requirements for foreign students applying to local universities. The list is divided into several fields of study: humanitarian, scientific, biomedical, engineering, technical and economic.

Under the ministry’s plan, each of the fields will include three compulsory and one specialised subject depending on the student’s future direction of education. In addition, the list will also include more general subjects such as Russian language, mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, marketing, and so on.

After completion training in the field, each foreign applicant will have to pass an examination on the compulsory subjects and an exam or test for a supplementary subject. Successful completion will entitle the student to enrol in a Russian university.

Compulsory subjects will be defined by the university’s administration, in accordance with the recommendations of the ministry. In a report in the business paper Izvestia, citing ministry sources, the period of training for foreign students to gain admission to a Russian universities will be 52 weeks, one academic year, of which 38 weeks will involve classroom training, four weeks for the examination period and 10 weeks for vacation.

Under the new requirements, each foreign applicant should have a vocabulary of at least 2,300 Russian words, be able to understand Russian texts read at the rate of 200-240 words per minute, and be able to read texts at a speed of 80-100 words per minute. In addition, each student must be able to write an essay and summaries in Russian.

Finally, each foreign applicant should have a knowledge of Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as knowing the biographies and certain facts about the life of Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

In the case of mathematics, foreigners should be able not only to perform the simplest mathematical calculations, but also be able to prove theorems and to deduce basic formulas, draw graphs and study their function, as well as knowing the basics of mathematical analysis.

Gulnara Krasnova, vice-president for international relations of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, said that all national education systems differed from each other and there was a need to develop a universal equivalent.

“Each institution shall decide for itself the evaluation criteria in different disciplines. We have a number of bilateral agreements with some countries in which applicants do not need to prove their level of education during the admission to Russian universities. But there are still a lot of countries which do not have such agreements with Russia.”

More than 250,000 foreign students from 150 countries are currently studying in Russian universities. Of these, more than 40,000 students are enrolled in state-funded places. According to ministry plans, the proportion of foreign students in higher education should increase from the current 2.3% to 6% by 2015, and to 10% by 2018.

Despite the large number of foreigners enrolled in Russian universities, only 5,000 Russian students go to another country for part of their studies each year, mostly to the US, UK and Canada.