Half a million students were expelled from Russian universities

According to the results of the 2024/2025 academic year, every tenth student was expelled from Russian universities. This was reported by TASS with reference to the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

In the specified academic year, 4.6 million students studied at Russian universities.

"1,092 of them dropped out due to illness, 157,583 left their studies at their own request, 186,132 were expelled due to academic failure, 147 thousand people dropped out for other reasons. In total, this is 10.7% of the total number of students," the department noted.

The Ministry stressed that the proportion of underachieving students has been steadily increasing since 2020, which is an indicator of increasing academic performance requirements from higher education organizations and, accordingly, a factor in improving the quality of higher education.

According to the deputy head of the Ministry Dmitry Afanasyev, in 2027 Russian universities will switch to a new model of higher education.

As EADaily reported, in May 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree launching a pilot project on higher education reform in Russia in the 2023-2026 academic years at MAI, MISIS, MPSU, St. Petersburg Mining University, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University and Tomsk State University.

The new system establishes basic and specialized higher education, as well as professional postgraduate studies. Specialized training means master's degree, residency and internship assistant. The terms of study at different levels are from four to six years in basic higher education, from one to three years in master's degree.