Putting A Price On Students

Summary The state has taken on the obligation of providing budget funds for the education of each individual student at an institute of higher learning if he or she has passed the unified state exam. Russia continues to experiment with its educational system. Five Russian regions used unified state exams last year. Two Russian regions decided to continue the experiment by introducing state-issued vouchers (GIFO) this year. Reformers who tend to modernize Russian education believe that both experiments are necessary to produce the right effect. If everything is more or less clear with the unified state exam, the GIFO is still a mysterious and unknown phenomenon. The only thing that is known about the GIFO is that it comes from the state budget.
The reasoning behind the vouchers is a better education chance for all. Now students will be able to control their debt which will be owed at the end of their matriculation.

Educational Impact The funding of Russian institutes of higher learning could, without exaggeration, be called equalizing. Today, each university or institute draws up an estimate according to which it receives its share of state funds. In doing so, no one takes into account the category of the particular institution, whether it is prestigious, strong or weak, what kind of experts and specialists it actually trains. In other words, there is no incentive to improve the quality of education. Fifty-one percent of first-year students who were admitted to institutions of higher learning last year had to pay for their education. Secondly, parents spend about one billion dollars to prepare their children for university exams and to ensure their admission to institutes and universities. Most of this money circulates in the shadow sector of the Russian education system. The Russian Education Ministry believes that this situation reveals the inefficiency of financing Russian education. A state that increases spending on education, including higher education, could expect maximum efficiency and the best performance.
Analysis I support the idea of the GIFO because it seems to give every student an equal opportunity for education. But I wonder how many times can a student take the unified exam since your amount of state support depends on your score. And I also wonder if you can take the exam more than once will your support increase? The plans sound good on paper but I wonder if only the gifted or upwardly mobile students will be the only ones who are helped by these vouchers. It seems as though the parents of these students need less support because they are already paying for extensive preparation for the unified exam. I believe this could also be a negative ploy, because it may just be used to redivide the educational system and remove the weaker students. But I guess in any case, any state support is good. So we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
Melnikova, Irina. “Putting a Price on Students.” Russian Issues (April 9, 2002) June 30, 2002.