Education and Science Ministry receives over 2,000 complaints in university admissions

MOSCOW, September 6 (Itar-Tass) —— The Education and Science Ministry received over 2,000 complaints about violations in the admission of new students to Russian higher educational establishments this year, Director of the Russian Education and Science Ministry’s Vocational Training Department Tatiana Davydenko told a Tuesday press conference.

“Mostly, the complaints were about violations in the admission of documents from prospective students. For instance, the callers said that the prospective students were pushed into applying for paid places. There were also complaints about violations in the admission of foreign citizens and the late posting of information on websites of higher educational establishments,” she said.

Some callers made proposals, Davydenko said. “For instance, they suggested permitting winners of education contests to apply to places in only one educational establishment of their choice,” she added.

The ministry’s hotline was operating from 8:00 a.m. through 3:00 p.m. on working days in the period of July 4 – August 15. High school graduates and their parents could receive consultations and answers to their questions.

The information about the callers was summed up and sent to the ministry’s group monitoring the admission of high school graduates to higher educational establishments.

The number of state-funded places in Russian higher educational establishments was cut by 7,500 as compared with last year, Davydenko said.

“An average admission score of this year amounted to 61.5 points for state-funded places and 55.4 points for privately-funded places. The admission score was the highest in humanitarian sciences,” she said.

The demand was the highest for courses in applied math (which had the admission score of 84.8 points), high-tech and energy systems (78 points) and international relations (76.2 points).

High school graduates with the highest score in the unified state exam preferred the Moscow Physics and Mathematics Institute, Davydenko said. “We are glad that the Moscow Linguistics University and the Russian Plekhanov Economics University were the other top two choices of the best school graduates,” she said.

High school graduates with the lowest scores in the unified state exam were admitted to the St. Petersburg Machine Building Institute and the Grozny State Oil Institute, she said. “The number of state-funded places in such institutes will be reduced,” she said.

A number of institutes, among them the Moscow Sygin State Textile University and the Kurgan State University, failed to admit the planned number of students to state-subsidized places.

“A total of 15% of the entire applicants were benefit holders, among them winners of education contests (2%),” Davydenko said.

More than 2% of high school graduates failed the unified state exam this year, which is less than in the previous years, head of the Federal Education Supervisory Service Lyubov Glebova said earlier.

“A total of 2.1% of high school graduates (52,500 people) failed the unified state exam,” she said. “The indicator was 2.3% in 2010 and 3% in 2009.”

More than 2.6 million schoolchildren took the exam this year, which was 11.8% less than the year before, Glebova said.

The most popular subjects of the unified state exam were natural science, physics and biology. The smallest number of graduates chose literature, geography and foreign languages.

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