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Research Programs / Projects

Accessibility of Higher Education for Socially Disadvantaged Groups

Head: Dr.Sc. S. Shishkin

Duration: December 2001 - June 2004

Support: Ford Foundation grants # 1025-0343, 1025-0343-1

Project participants: over 30 experts at the first stage, who participated in the project workshops; 12 research groups at the second stage.

Coordinator: N. Kanatova

The project is aimed at initiating, monitoring and generalizing research on the accessibility of higher education for socially disadvantaged groups.

At the first stage (December 2001 - June 2002) the network of specialists and research groups interested in this problem was created. Connections were set up with organizations, groups, and individual researchers from several Russian cities (Chelyabinsk, Ekaterinburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Saratov,St.-Petersburg, Ulyanovsk). The Expert Council on the problems of accessibility of professional education for socially disadvantaged groups was formed.

In January-April 2002, five workshops were held to discuss the results of the already available research on the accessibility of higher education and the directions of prospective research.

An analytical review has been prepared describing the current state of research on the accessibility of higher education. Research agenda was developed. In July 2002, a round-table was held to discuss the agenda.

The prepared materials were published in the IISP collection of papers: Problems of Accessibility of Higher Education. WP3/2002/01 (IISP Working Papers Series) / Edited by S. Shishkin. Independent Institute for Social Policy. Moscow: Signal, 2003. The second stage of the project was implemented in July-October 2002. With support from the Ford Foundation, a competition was held among research groups to identify projects that would suit most to meet the tasks of the agenda worked out at the first stage. 11 applications were selected out of 52 submitted.

At the third stage (November 2002 - December 2003), these research projects were implemented. IISP monitored the course of the projects.

An additional research group was formed to analyze the influence of the admission rules' and the financing mechanisms transformation on the accessibility of higher education.

Three workshops were held in Moscow for the research groups' leaders and members of the Expert Council.

A detailed analysis of social, economic and cultural factors of higher education accessibility was accomplished. The research allowed to identify the following social groups most disadvantaged in terms of their access to quality higher education:

• rural population and people living in small towns remote from university centers;
• children from low-income families, including children of people with disabilities, of the unemployed, and of unskilled workers;
• families with low educational potential of the parents;
• migrants' children;
• graduates from primary professional institutions;
• children with poor health.

Social groups with relatively poor opportunities of entering higher educational institutions are concentrated in no prestige universities (teachers' training and agricultural colleges/universities, etc.), at no prestige faculties, or specialize in subjects with low competition at admission.

The state policy of equalization of opportunities to enter higher educational institutions should develop in two directions:

• equalization the quality of secondary (general) education;
• providing subsidies for education on paid basis the talented children from socially disadvantaged groups.

The memorandum "Ensuring of accessibility of professional education" was prepared in November 2003 on the basis of the first results of the projects and submitted to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the State Duma. On November 12, 2003 the main results of the project were presented at the workgroup on education reform at the Center for Strategic Research Foundation with participation of official representatives of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

At the fourth, final stage of the project (January - June, 2004), scientific editing of papers summarizing research results, authors' revision of the papers and final editing of the collection of papers for the publication were accomplished.

The research results were presented at the Second IISP research conference "Social Policy: Challenges of the XXIst Century" held on February 25-26, 2004, and at the International conference "Accessibility of Higher Education: Challenges for Transition Countries" held on June 29-30, 2004, in Moscow. See project summaries.

The research results were generalized in the collection of papers:
Shishkin S. (ed.) Accessibility of Higher Education in Russia / Independent Institute for Social Policy. Moscow: Pomatur, 2004. (In Russian)