The implementation of the rights of persons with disabilities to education is associated with a number of problems related to the reform of the education system and social policy in relation to persons with disabilities. From 1930 to 1960 the first specialized programs were opened in technical universities, focused on certain types of disabilities, including the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the North-Western Polytechnic Institute in Leningrad, but this problem was peripheral to state policy, public opinion and the higher education management system as a whole. Since the 1960s, a number of central universities have been accepting disabled people for group and individual education (Institute of Culture, Mukhinskoye Higher School, Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after A.I. Herzen, Leningrad State University, Leningrad Polytechnic Institute), the number of specialties is expanding . With the adoption of the Federal Law “On the Social Protection of the Disabled in the Russian Federation” (1995), for the first time, the goal of state policy is not to help the disabled, but “to ensure that disabled people have equal opportunities with other citizens in exercising civil, economic, political and other rights and freedoms provided for by the Constitution RF". A number of federal targeted programs are being implemented in Russia, through which several universities received targeted funding to strengthen the material and technical base of higher education for people with disabilities. This makes it possible to increase the admission of disabled people to universities, to expand the number and variability of educational programs, including those in the humanities.
There are not so many examples of universities that implement targeted training programs for students with disabilities, but their number is gradually growing. Until 2000, only three authorized universities (MGTU named after Bauman, Moscow Boarding Institute and Novosibirsk State Technical University) provided special educational and rehabilitation programs for students with disabilities in the form of a state order. In accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation, the creation and equipping of these and a number of other model centers of secondary and higher professional education and other measures for the professional rehabilitation of disabled people continue. In addition to the three universities mentioned above, among those that conduct educational programs for the disabled under the state order, one should name the Krasnoyarsk Trade and Economic Institute, the Moscow City Pedagogical University, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of St. Petersburg.
It should be noted that in addition to those programs that are supported by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, there are also pioneers who, on their own initiative and with grant support, implement various models of higher education for people with disabilities. Thus, since 1992 Chelyabinsk State University has been teaching disabled students, first in the form of an experiment, and since 1995 the university has moved to systematic work to create conditions for students with disabilities. In 2001, 11,073 disabled students were studying in 299 universities of the system of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, including 4,454 students in polytechnics; in classical universities - 3591 people; in pedagogical universities - 2161 people; economic - 840 people. At the same time, according to the Department of Special Education of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, the number of such students is unevenly distributed in these universities: in fourteen - more than a hundred, in 52 universities there are from 50 to 100 disabled students, and the number of students with disabilities in all other universities is up to several dozen. The number of students with disabilities in Russian universities continues to grow: from 5.4 thousand people in 2002 to 14.5 thousand in 2003. In the period from 1996 to 2003, the proportion of disabled students among students increased from 0.08 to 0, 4%. This is a positive trend, although it is still far from the European level (in France, the proportion of disabled students among students is 5%). It should be noted that the statistics of admission to universities of disabled people in Russia is not taken into account when calculating the rankings of universities, in contrast to the competition indicators and the volume of extrabudgetary funds, while in the UK, for example, the number of students representing the social groups of the poor, migrants, disabled people, as well as the availability of programs to prepare these applicants for admission to a university depends on the amount of targeted budget funding.
In accordance with the approach of the Ministry of Education of Russia, a student and a disabled person are two different statuses, suggesting complementary relationships between the individual, the university and the state. In this regard, the higher education of persons with disabilities as a whole seems to be developing according to two scenarios. In the first case, a student with a disability has the status of an ordinary student at the university, with all the pluses and minuses that follow from this. The positive aspects of this situation are rather connected with the moral point of view that the disabled themselves broadcast: it is about treating disabled people the same way as everyone else, since this means real equality, respect for human dignity, partnership. At the same time, with such a development of events, many students with disabilities find themselves excluded from the educational process due to the inability of the university educational space to their characteristics.
In the second case, a student with a disability has the status of not only a student, but also a disabled person at the university. This is reflected in the curricula, teaching methods, load calculation and features of the staffing of a higher educational institution, as well as in the range of services and facilities of the university environment that allow an applicant, and subsequently a student with a disability, to learn the skills of learning, behavior in an integrated environment, to easily get to to the right place in the university, to have access to special equipment and a library. These special conditions are provided with the support of the Ministry of Education and the regional budget.
And yet, the receipt of quality higher education by disabled people is hampered by multiple structural constraints that are characteristic of societies with a complex stratification structure. In particular, the rarity of integrated programs in secondary schools, and a host of other factors, limit choices in post-secondary and higher education for young people with disabilities.

Higher Education for Disabled People: Research Issues

Abroad, the problem of higher education for disabled people has attracted the attention of researchers since the late 1980s. . It discusses aspects of the social identity of students, their difficult path to knowledge, to themselves and their profession, to friends, mentors and colleagues - through barriers, primarily of a social nature. By the end of the 1990s. questions are raised about the accessibility of various types of additional education for the disabled, textbooks are published for teachers and support staff of universities - coordinators of programs to support the disabled, in the role of which social work specialists often act. J. Hall and T. Tinklin, through the micro-level of life experience of students with disabilities, identified a range of problems and dilemmas that it would be nice to take into account higher education institutions in order to provide students with special needs with equal opportunities to receive higher education. The experience of teaching a disabled person at a university covers a wide range of issues, from the organization of higher education and equal access to the definition of "disability" by various participants in the resulting social interactions.
Studies of the values ​​of adolescents with hearing impairment, including those regarding education and future profession, conducted by V.S. Questions about the methods and effects of vocational rehabilitation of disabled people are raised by researchers in terms of interdepartmental and intersectoral cooperation in organizing programs of vocational and additional education, organizing the social infrastructure of the educational process and optimizing employment methods.
Our survey data shows that, firstly, the majority of students, parents and school teachers are in favor of inclusion - at least in words, and secondly, the attitudes of the environment towards educational integration depend on a number of factors, among which the most significant is the respondent's experience of dealing with people with disabilities in everyday life. At the same time, there are a number of objective obstacles to such a reform of the educational system, among which a significant place is occupied by the unsuitability of the school environment, the unpreparedness of teaching staff and the inadequate financing of the education system. Only about a third of the senior students surveyed in 2002 had the opportunity to get to know a disabled child, which, in our opinion, indicates that the opportunities for such acquaintance are small, and partly they are set by the institutional framework, in particular, the organization of the education system.
It should be noted that some authors studying the attitude of students towards disabled people, as a result of analyzing the data of mass surveys, come to conclusions that only state inequality and intolerance, but do not suggest ways to change the current situation. Thus, having obtained data on paired distributions that demonstrate the relationship between the variables "sex" and "attitude towards disabled people", the researchers conclude that "the female student group is more preferable for the social and psychological adaptation of disabled people in the field of higher education"; and after analyzing the links between the variables "specialty" and "attitude towards the disabled", they get a similar conclusion: "the optimal socio-psychologically higher educational area for disabled people is the sphere of humanitarian education" . From our point of view, such conclusions may influence political decisions, which, firstly, will limit the choice of applicants with disabilities, and secondly, will in no way allow changing barriers of a socio-psychological nature, perhaps more noticeable where stereotypical "male" representations, for example, in engineering and science departments.
Social attitudes towards the disabled should be understood not as a given once and for all, but as a social order that can be reconstructed and changed. Meanwhile, an independent life and a free choice of life strategies by disabled people are discussed today only by circles most involved in this issue - individual public organizations of disabled people, some university teachers and researchers. The critical perspective of the analysis of social policy towards people with disabilities is presented by sociologists and economists, draws attention to the vital activity of people with disabilities themselves. It is necessary to specially note the representatives of public organizations of the disabled, who bring into the discussion the perspective of direct experience and therefore have the right to examine educational projects.
Problems of accessibility of higher education for disabled people from the point of view of the subjects of the educational process.
The project included interviews with 34 experts in Saratov, Samara, Moscow, Chelyabinsk, St. Petersburg, a survey of teachers (N=106) and students in Saratov (N=266) and Chelyabinsk (N=100) disabled people of the Saratov region who need vocational education at various levels (N=842). The task of the next stage was to establish the features and problems of integration from the point of view of students with disabilities, as well as the motives and strategies of applicants with disabilities. 11 interviews with students and 21 interviews with high school students in Saratov and Samara were collected. In addition, two case studies of the integration of children with disabilities in a comprehensive school in Samara were carried out. Below we present an analysis of the data from the survey of students and teachers.
As already mentioned, Chelyabinsk State University has been successfully developing a program of integrated education for people with disabilities for several years, implementing a range of services for pre-university training and rehabilitation, socio-psychological support for studying at a university. In universities in Saratov, we had difficulty obtaining data on the number of students with disabilities. The main source of data on this issue is the student trade union committee, where students apply for social issues, but the data from this resource cannot be called complete. There are no statistics on disability groups and types of illness in universities. The proportion of students with disabilities in large universities in Saratov, despite the desire of this social group to receive higher education (according to surveys and interviews), is very small. The leader in the number of disabled students is Saratov State University; More than 140 students with disabilities studied at various faculties, and a methodological room for the accessibility of education was created.
The basis of the research program was the idea that the acquisition of higher education by disabled people takes place in a specific socio-cultural environment of the university, formed by the attitudes of three groups of actors - the student environment, teachers and university administrators. Each of these groups is characterized by its own characteristics of the perception of the problem under consideration due to the difference in role positions in the educational process. The opinion of the university administration was studied by the method of focused interviews, while students and teachers became respondents to a mass survey. Taking into account the differences in the organization of programs in the universities of Saratov and Chelyabinsk, we believe that we can talk about a comparison between regular and integrated education in relation to such indicators as (a) awareness of the need for special skills to work with people with disabilities within the walls of the university, (b), the attitude of teachers towards students with disabilities, (c) the attitude of students towards disabilities in general and towards their fellows with disabilities in particular.
Comparison of survey results in Saratov and Chelyabinsk universities shows that in the environment of integrated education, the proportion of teachers who do not feel the need for special knowledge and skills when working with students with disabilities is significantly lower - by almost 17%. Awareness of the need for special knowledge and skills among teachers working with disabled people most likely characterizes such a level of professionalization, when a collision with the reality of the educational process stimulates teachers to reflect on their own abilities to organize the educational process in new conditions.
Those who expressed the need to possess special knowledge and skills are approximately equally represented (below the level of sampling error) in Saratov and Chelyabinsk, while among the teachers of Chelyabinsk there was a significant group of respondents who did not decide on the answer (11.9%) . These are teachers of different disciplines, age, gender, united by the fact that their confidence in the sufficiency of their own pedagogical skills in the new conditions turned out to be shaken.
Relationships in the student team are an important contextual condition for the integration of a disabled person into the social environment of the university. According to a survey of teachers and students, the attitude towards disabled people as ordinary students is more often manifested in the integrated environment of Chelyabinsk State University: both students and teachers of this university much more often (from 10 to 13%) assess such attitudes in student groups as ordinary. In this case, the positive result of integration is manifested in the gradual reduction of tension in attitudes towards disabled people as Others, unusual, unlike "ordinary" university students. "Normalization" of social relations is expressed in a decrease in the level of "specialness". The number of those who believe that there is a special attitude towards students with disabilities in the student community is almost two times lower among Chelyabinsk teachers than among Saratov university employees.
Significant differences in attitudes towards disability in two different social contexts indicate, in our opinion, the positive impact of integrated education on the perception of students and teachers of students with disabilities.
And yet, the proportion of those students who treat disabled people in a special way remains quite large. The study highlighted the negative and positive aspects of a special attitude towards students with disabilities (Table 1).

Table 1. Signs of a special attitude towards students with disabilities according to their classmates,% (multiple answers could be selected)
The first thing that seems important in a comparative analysis is a significantly higher (by 24%) than in Saratov, the proportion of Chelyabinsk students who believe that they are trying to provide moral support in groups where disabled people study. However, this indicator, although in different proportions, is the leader in both cities, but in Saratov, the negative aspect came in second place - respondents believe that people with disabilities are shunned. In Chelyabinsk, the second most important option (and this judgment is noted almost twice as often as in Saratov) was the option “help with studies”. The third place in terms of the percentage of respondents, in Saratov, is occupied by two options: “help with movement” and “joking” (21.6% each), while in Chelyabinsk, the third most popular option was the option of assistance with movement (16.7%). Thus, in an integrated environment, students are more likely to note the positive aspects of "special" relationships among classmates.

Both positive and negative aspects of students' attitudes towards their fellows with disabilities are explained differently in two student communities that differ in the degree of integration of the social environment (Table 2). On the issue of positive motivation, significant differences were revealed: in Saratov, a large proportion characterizes such indicators of personal virtue as the kindness of individual students, the need to help disabled people due to their deprivation. In Chelyabinsk, the confidence of the respondents that disabled students need only moral assistance is of greater importance, since they are already coping with their studies; in addition, the fact of personal relationships with students with disabilities is more important. Such differences, in our opinion, are due to the specifics of an inclusive learning environment - abstract kindness in it is replaced by a real practice of support, due to personal relationships with people with disabilities, knowledge of their motivation and learning abilities.

Table 2. Motivation of students to provide support to fellow students with disabilities according to

students,% (multiple answers could be selected)
The reasons for the negative attitudes found in the study groups in which disabled people study also differ in the two cities. In Saratov, in the first place (twice as often as in the integrated learning environment) came the judgment that our society is accustomed to oppressing disabled people in everything and treating them down. Here, more often than in Chelyabinsk, they indicate that the specialty in which disabled people were trained is not suitable for them (Table 3). In turn, the Chelyabinsk students, to a greater extent than the Saratov students, ignored a position that reflects the fears of a segregated society (“Some do not like people with disabilities because they are afraid of them”).

Table 3 Reasons for the negative attitude of students towards their classmates with disabilities according to students,% (multiple answers could be selected)

Contradictory ideas about disability and the inability of our society to recognize and accept people with disabilities are reflected in interviews with representatives of the university administration: “I know one girl with a physical handicap who was refused by the universities of our city, but accepted to a university in Israel. And now she studies there very well” (female, 50 years old, Saratov). In fact, this quote illustrates the "disability" of the domestic system of higher education, which is in fact unable to implement federal legislation.
According to the respondents, people with disabilities need to choose a job that would not require “great physical costs: secretaries, clerks, librarians. A job that requires you to be responsible only for yourself, for the results of your work” (female, 45 years old, Saratov). Meanwhile, there are examples when disabled graduates study at graduate school and successfully defend dissertations, work as university professors, heads of small, medium and even large businesses, head public organizations, and become politicians.
On the question of the presence of a special teaching attitude towards students with disabilities, we found minor differences among the students surveyed, both from the integrated and from the regular educational environment. The effects of social integration are manifested in the perception of students with disabilities as ordinary students. Chelyabinsk residents are more confident (the difference with Saratov residents is 7%) that there is no special attitude of teachers towards students with disabilities in their group.
Representatives of administrations, themselves teachers, in an interview with us emphasized the special qualities of diligence, responsibility inherent in disabled people, who sometimes do not concede and even outperform their fellow students in academic performance: “We have disabled people who study better than healthy ones ... already on senior years, since they are very interested in learning, they usually begin to even out” (male, 48 years old, Samara); “Although those disabled people who are studying now show good knowledge. Even sometimes better than normal. Why? Do not know? Maybe they have nothing better to do? After all, everything is in discos, clubs, there, dates, love - but they don’t have this. So they sit and study” (female, 50 years old, Saratov). The mentioned opinion about disabled people as “asexual and notorious” subjects is a stereotype, and we have heard it several times, including the fact that university graduates with disabilities are especially eager to become full-time employees of private enterprises, relying on their special qualities of perseverance and conscientiousness in work.
In general, despite all the differences in attitudes towards students with disabilities, the majority of teachers (78%) show a high level of agreement on the need for special measures.

Educational needs of young people with disabilities in the Saratov region

In the process of project implementation, by August 2003, an electronic database on the educational needs of disabled people was created. The database, after preliminary cleaning and selection of relevant documents, was made up of 830 records of people with disabilities, collected with the help of social workers and representatives of the district MSEC in Saratov and the Saratov region - the cities of Engels, Rtishchev, and a number of other cities, villages and towns of the region. Information was provided by MSEC clients on a voluntary basis, mainly in connection with the desire to continue education, so the records contain contact information, last name, first name and patronymic, nature of disability and disability group.
The disability group has a significant impact on the nature of employment - as the degree of disability increases (from the third group to the first), the proportion of those employed in positions requiring higher education decreases and the number of unemployed increases. Among disabled people of the third group, 4.2% of them work in positions requiring higher education, and the proportion of unemployed is 38.6%. Among persons with the most severe first group of disability, there are no those who work in positions requiring higher education, and the proportion of unemployed is almost twice as high, every three people out of four (73.7%) are unemployed (Table 4).

Table 4. The nature of employment of persons with disabilities of various disability groups

Analyzing the database, we found evidence that there is a certain relationship between the nature of education of disabled people in secondary school, the possibility of obtaining higher education and the further opportunity to work in a position requiring higher education. It was found that every third disabled person who graduated from a regular secondary school (33%) has a diploma of higher education, while among those who graduated from a specialized boarding school and those who studied at home, only one in five has a diploma of higher education (23 and 21% respectively). It should be noted that obtaining a higher education does not guarantee a position corresponding to the qualification for the disabled - only 16.4% of university diploma holders work in positions requiring higher education, more than half of university graduates are unemployed (54.1%) (Table 5).

Table 5. Employment in accordance with the qualifications obtained for persons with diplomas of higher and secondary education

In general, based on these data, it can be assumed that the possession of a university diploma provides its holder with some advantages in the labor market than the possession of a diploma of specialized secondary education - among graduates of secondary specialized educational institutions, there are significantly more unemployed persons (62.6%).

conclusions

Domestic universities at different times and for various reasons began to work on teaching disabled people and gained this invaluable experience. In some cases, this decision was made by the government, in other situations, the initiative belonged to the head of the higher education institution or someone from his team. At the same time, as a rule, it was about the "specialization" of the university in a particular category of disabled people. The sources and degree of educational integration are other grounds for comparison: in some cases, the program is supported by the Ministry of Education, in others - with the support of foreign funds. Some universities have developed a “traditional” set of offerings for applicants with disabilities, such as computer technology and design. In other universities, from year to year, offers vary depending on the recruitment for certain specialties.
Despite the current federal legislation that guarantees benefits for applicants with disabilities, a number of factors make it difficult for people with disabilities to enter a university. Most universities in Russia are not provided with even the minimum conditions necessary for teaching disabled people in them. These conditions relate to the architecture of buildings and classrooms, doorways and stairs, furniture and equipment, the provision of canteens, libraries and toilets, the absence of lounges and chairs in the corridors, medical rooms necessary for the daily needs of some students with disabilities. Higher education institutions do not have the opportunity to reconstruct their premises according to the principles of universal design from their own budgetary funds. Extrabudgetary funds are spent on the basic needs of universities, while the special needs of people with disabilities in the repair and reconstruction of premises are not taken into account. The lack of funding is a sore point for many universities, especially when this university is not a beneficiary of targeted federal programs and does not receive funds from the regional or city budget. There are several private universities that attract sponsors to support educational programs for the disabled.
Accessibility is understood by respondents in connection with the possibility of freedom of choice of faculty and specialty and the absence of financial, bureaucratic or other social barriers. The accessibility of the higher education system is guaranteed to persons with disabilities by the federal law on education. Ways to implement the policy of accessibility of higher education for people with disabilities differ from university to university. Single examples of institutions of higher professional education have now adopted and are implementing internal regulations in relation to disabled students studying here. Recent initiatives at these universities have had a positive effect on applicants and students with disabilities, whose number is growing, as well as the number of universities that open pre-university training programs for the disabled, special centers and faculties. The policy of higher education for disabled people is oriented towards disabled people as a social minority, leaving the choice of educational program and place of study to the state and educational institutions, and not to the applicants themselves: most of the existing programs are specialized in diagnosis and localized in certain regions, which significantly narrows the educational choice of a disabled person.
Higher education for people with disabilities is developing today despite the existing negative social attitude, which is expressed in inaction, explicit or implicit opposition on the part of society, and, in particular, hidden discriminatory practices implemented by admissions committees. Disabled people do not always receive centralized assistance in the learning process, and the creation of adequate educational conditions mainly depends on the efforts of the family, sometimes on the private initiative of classmates, faculty, and university administration. Administrative workers, although they recognize the need to expand the availability of higher education, but in order to avoid unnecessary troubles, they prefer not to launch large-scale measures for the social and educational integration of people with disabilities.
The motivation of applicants with disabilities to enter a university is reduced in case of low quality of training in boarding schools, due to the fear of the mainstream, i.e., a cash, unadapted environment, the lack of special devices and equipment in universities, and difficult mobility due to the lack of special transport. Some students come to the university right after high school, where they received good training and were encouraged for further educational growth. Many high school students showed disbelief in their own abilities and psychological unpreparedness to study at a university. Polls of experts among the disabled, who were leaders of public organizations, show that the status of a disabled person largely depends on the systematic efforts of the parents of a disabled person to advance their child in the structure of education. By refusing to place a disabled child in a specialized boarding school, parents enter into a “fight” against the inertia, bureaucracy and stereotypes of the system of the Soviet, and now Russian, educational institution. The claims of disabled students themselves to receive higher education, of course, are associated with family attitudes. However, people with disabilities who have had experience in integrated education are more likely to plan and enroll in universities. The experience of co-education of disabled and non-disabled removes fears and tensions about communication with the student environment, adds confidence to students with special needs in the availability of educational material for them. Integration should begin with pre-school and school education and continue in the systems of additional and higher education. An important issue is the delay in the adoption of the Special Education Act, which is intended to regulate inclusion policy and other key issues in the education of persons with disabilities.
The availability of quality higher education is reduced in the absence of the so-called rehabilitation component of higher education, which requires additional budgetary allocations and should be provided along with educational services. For many students with disabilities, the situation worsens due to the low economic status of their families, which is expressed in insufficient conditions for home training, the absence of a telephone, computer, and electronic communication. The academic experience of students with disabilities varies greatly from institution to institution and faculty to faculty. The attitude of students and teachers to the social inclusion of people with disabilities in higher education depends on how disability is defined, whether the necessary services are available, on the individual qualities and experience of students, policies at the level of an individual university, and the skills and ideology of a particular teacher. Non-academic aspects of higher education are an equally important factor in successful learning. Teachers emphasize the positive role of integration for the personal growth of non-disabled students. Students with disabilities, in turn, get great opportunities for social experience in an integrated environment. Most universities do not provide any retraining or advanced training programs for teachers working with people with disabilities, while the teachers themselves consider the issue of retraining and the development of special methods to be relevant. More attention should be paid to the prevention and elimination of elements of discriminatory policy in educational institutions, to bring disability issues to the understanding of students and staff.
Currently, applicants with disabilities have only two alternatives. The first is to enroll in a higher education institution at the place of residence, where there is hardly an adapted barrier-free environment, where teachers are hardly prepared to work with people with disabilities. Another alternative is to go to another region where such an environment exists. Here, another problem arises related to the fact that a student who has come from another region must “bring with him” the financing of his rehabilitation program, which is difficult due to the lack of coordination between departments and the lack of streamlining of this procedure.

1. The article was written following the results of the research project "Accessibility of Higher Education for the Disabled", carried out in 2002-2003. a group of sociologists from the Saratov State Technical University with the support of the Ford Foundation and the Independent Institute for Social Policy, consisting of: Belozerova E.V., Zaitsev D.V., Karpova G.G., Naberushkina E.K., Romanov P.V., Chernetskaya A.A., Yarskaya-Smirnova E.R. (supervisor)
2. Presidential program "Children of Russia" (subprogram "Children with Disabilities"); the presidential complex program "Social Support for the Disabled for 2000-2005"; federal program "Development of education in Russia"; federal target program "Development of a unified educational information environment (2001-2005); state scientific program "Universities of Russia"; federal target program "National technological base" (basic technological program "Technologies for training personnel for the national technological base").
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5. Stanevsky A.G. Designing the content of university technical education for hearing disabled // Vocational education for disabled people. M.: Moscow boarding school for the disabled, 2000. P. 85-88.
6. Conceptual approaches to the creation of a system of vocational education for disabled people in the Russian Federation. Materials provided by T.Volosovets, Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, 2003
7. Stowell R. Catching Up? Provision for students with special educational needs in further and higher education, London: Skill: National Bureau for Students with Disabilities, 1987
8. Low J. Negotiating Identities, Negotiating Environments: an interpretation of the experiences of students with disabilities// Disability & Society, 11(2). 1996. P.235-248
9. Leicester M. and Lovell T. Disability Voice: educational experience and disability // Disability & Society. Vol. 12. No. 1, 1997. P 111-118.
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11. Sobkin V.S. A teenager with a hearing impairment: value orientations, life plans, social connections. empirical research. M.: TsSO RAO, 1997. S.79-80
12. Kozlov V.N., Martynova E.A., Mishina O.K. University students about the education of the disabled. Chelyabinsk: Chelyab. State University, 1999
13. Yarskaya-Smirnova E.R., Loshakova I.I. Inclusive education of children with disabilities // Sociological research. No. 5, 2003. P. 100-106
14. Scientific and methodological support for the individualization of the educational route and psychological and pedagogical support for students with disabilities in the system of higher education. A manual for university teachers / Compiled by Goncharov S.A., Kantor V.Z., Nikitina M.I., Calculation S.A., Semikin V.V. St. Petersburg, 2002
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18. We express our gratitude for the help in conducting the survey at ChelGU to the staff of this university, headed by prof. Martynova E.A.

Introduction to the problem

1. The role of educational career planning

2. The problem of paid higher education

3. The role of the USE in the accessibility of higher education

Summary

Literature

Introduction to the problem

The issues of developing education in our country are hot issues, they now affect the interests of almost every Russian family. One of these issues is the accessibility of higher education.

Since 2000, the number of students admitted to universities has exceeded the number of those who successfully completed 11 classes and received a matriculation certificate. In 2006, this gap reached 270 thousand people. University enrollment has exceeded 1.6 million in recent years.

But a sharp decline in the number of applicants due to demographic reasons is not far off. For another year or two, the number of school graduates will exceed 1 million people, and then it will decrease to about 850-870 thousand. Judging by the situation in recent years, there should be a huge surplus of places in universities, and the problem of affordability will cease to exist. So is it or isn't it?

Now having a higher education has become prestigious. Will this situation change in the near future? To a large extent, the prevailing attitude towards the problems of higher education is formed under the influence of the trends that we observe - and it is rather inertial. In 2005, it is hard to believe that in the early 90s of the last century, young people thought whether to go to university or not. Many then preferred to make a choice in favor of the “real business”, and now they are “gaining” education in order to consolidate the social status that they received by postponing their studies to a later date.

But a significant part of those entering universities in recent years go there only because it becomes simply indecent not to have a higher education. Moreover, since higher education is becoming a social norm, the employer prefers to hire those who have received it.

So, everyone learns - sooner or later, but they learn, albeit in different ways. And it is difficult for us, in the conditions of an educational boom, to imagine that in a year or two the situation in the higher education system can change and, accordingly, our perception of many problems associated with entering higher education will change.

1. The role of educational career planning

On June 30, 2007, the Independent Institute for Social Policy (IISP) held an international conference dedicated to the results of the large-scale project "Accessibility of Higher Education for Socially Vulnerable Groups". Speaking about the accessibility of higher education, we will largely rely on these studies, which are unique for Russia. At the same time, we will dwell on the results of another very interesting project “Monitoring the Economics of Education”, which has been conducted by the HSE for the third year already.

As the results of both studies show, the desire to get a higher education and the willingness to pay for tuition is characteristic of almost all Russian families: both families with high incomes and families with very modest incomes. Both parents with a high level of education and those with a low one are ready to pay. However, different family resources lead children to different outcomes. This determines not only which university the child will eventually enter, but also what kind of work he will be able to apply for after receiving higher education. But different financial possibilities of families begin to influence the education of a child much earlier than it comes to entering universities.

These opportunities are already determined by the school in which the child went to study. If even 20 years ago you could simply send your son or daughter to a school next to your home, now you have to choose the “right” school. True, both 20 and 30 years ago, the quality of a school was largely assessed by how its graduates entered universities: everyone or almost everyone entered a good school. No matter how many eminent figures in education now say that the school should not train for a university, that the orientation towards admission deforms the educational process, cripple the child's psyche and creates in him the wrong attitudes in life - the school continues to prepare for a university. But if earlier it was possible to say that everyone gets good from a good teacher, and this supplemented the characteristics of the school, now a good school is a necessary, but, as a rule, far from sufficient condition for admission to the university in which the child wants to enter or in which wants to identify his family. And now almost no one remembers the teacher. At the same time, in recent years, the formation of educational networks of universities has been underway, and depending on whether the school belongs to the near or far circle of such a network, the chances of a child getting into the chosen university increase or decrease.

However, a child's real educational career begins even before school. Parents now have to think about it literally from his birth: which kindergarten he will go to, how to get into a prestigious school, which one to finish. It can be said that now from early childhood there is an accumulation of the "credit" educational history of the child. It is important not only how he studied, but also where. Admission or non-admission to a particular university is a logical continuation of an educational career, although it does not end with a university.

Consequently, a lot now depends on how early a family thinks about the prospects for the education of their child. And it is access to a good kindergarten and a good school that largely determines access to a good university. When we talk about the problems of rural schools, we primarily focus on the fact that the quality of education in rural schools is lower than in urban ones. This is generally true, but it is far from the whole truth. In the village, a child goes to the kindergarten that is available: his family has no choice. He goes to the only school, he again has no choice. Therefore, his parents do not think about his educational career; more precisely, they can think about it quite late, when the question of whether to go to study at a university and, if so, which one, will already rise to its full height.

A similar problem exists for children from small and even medium-sized towns. The possibilities of choice are small for them from the very beginning, and the limited choice of the university only reinforces and confirms this.

If we talk about the possibilities of choosing a school for children in the capitals (Moscow and St. Petersburg), then they are higher here. The role is played not only by higher incomes of the population, but also by the presence of a developed transport network that allows a schoolchild, especially a high school student, to get to school on the other side of the city.

At the same time, it must be emphasized that the educational opportunities provided by Moscow are significantly higher than in other regions of the country. This, in particular, is evidenced by the volume of paid services provided to the population of the city in education compared to other Russian regions.

So, the presence or absence of a choice either pushes parents to plan an educational career, or puts this problem on the back burner. And a separate question is the price of such a choice.

Is this situation exclusively Russian? Generally speaking, no. In developed countries, parents start planning their children's educational careers very early. Naturally, the quality of this planning depends on the educational and material level of the family. One thing is important - a modern university begins with a kindergarten.

2. The problem of paid higher education

In a study under the IISP project, E.M. Avraamova showed that children from families with low resource potential are now enrolling en masse in universities, but this enrollment has ceased to play the role of a social lift traditional for higher education. As a rule, after graduating from a higher educational institution, they find that higher education does not give them either income or social status.

Table 1

Relationship between the resource endowment of households and the possibility of obtaining a promising profession

Disappointment sets in. This is especially difficult for low-income families, since they, having sent their child to a university, as a rule, have already exhausted all the possibilities for a social breakthrough. More affluent families, having discovered that the education received does not meet their expectations, rely on obtaining a second (other) higher education or some other prestigious educational program (for example, an MBA program).

A.G. Levinson, in his research within the framework of the IISP project, revealed that in Russian society, obtaining two higher educations is becoming a new social norm. 20% of persons aged 13-15 years old declare a desire to receive two higher educations, including 25% of young people in the capitals and 28% in the families of specialists.

Thus, educational careers are becoming increasingly complex, involving constant choices. Accordingly, the problem of the accessibility of higher education is changing, being built into a new social and economic context.

It is also important to take into account that entering a university does not solve all problems - this is only the beginning of the journey. You have to graduate from a prestigious university. And this has become an independent problem in recent years.

The availability of higher education also depends on how the state will finance it. Currently, spears are also breaking here. The majority of the population (according to the results of a study by A.G. Levinson) continues to believe that education, including higher education, should be free. But in fact, more than 46% of the total number of students in state universities pays. Today, 57% of students study at state universities on a paid basis in their first year. If we take into account the contingent of non-state universities, it turns out that in Russia at present every second student pays for higher education (in fact, 56% of Russian students are already studying on a paid basis). At the same time, the cost of education, both in the public and non-public sectors of higher education, is constantly growing.

As early as 2003, tuition fees at state universities exceeded tuition fees at non-state ones. At prestigious higher education institutions, tuition fees can be 2-10 times higher than the average, depending on the type of institution and specialty, as well as the location of the institution.

Significant funds are spent by families not only on education at the university, but also on admission to higher education. According to sociological research, families spend about 80 billion rubles on the transition from school to university. This is a lot of money, so changing the rules for admission to universities (for example, the introduction of a unified state exam - the Unified State Examination) will inevitably affect someone's material interests. Tutoring accounts for the largest share of the above amount (approximately 60%). It is unlikely that tutoring in itself can be considered an absolute evil. Firstly, it was, for example, back in Tsarist Russia, was practiced in the Soviet era, and has flourished at the present time. Secondly, with mass production - and modern education is mass production - there is an inevitable need for an individual adjustment of a product or service to the needs of the consumer. This is the normal role of the tutor.

But in recent years, for many tutors (although by no means for all), this role has been significantly transformed: it began to consist in the fact that the tutor had to not only teach something within the framework of the school curriculum, and not even so much give knowledge in accordance with the requirements are no longer universities, but a specific university, how much to ensure admission to the chosen university. This meant that payment was taken not for giving knowledge and skills, but for certain information (about the peculiarities of examination problems, for example, or how to solve a specific problem) or even for informal services (to poke around, follow up, etc.). Therefore, it became necessary to take a tutor only and exclusively from the educational institution to which the child was going to enter (this applies both to the provision of some exclusive information, and to the provision of informal services). This does not mean that admission to all universities was necessarily associated with tutors or with informal relationships, but it became more and more difficult to enter prestigious universities or prestigious specialties without appropriate “support”. In general, the idea began to take shape that a good education at school was no longer enough to enter the university, which made it possible to hope for a successful professional career in the future.

Sociological studies have shown that parents are still inclined to believe that "you can study at a well-known university for free, but it is no longer possible to enter it without money." Connections are an alternative to money. In a "regular" university, there may still be enough knowledge itself, but the knowledge itself is already differentiated into just knowledge, and knowledge, taking into account the requirements of a "specific university". And this knowledge is given only either by courses at the university, or again by tutors.

38.4% of applicants are guided only by knowledge. At the same time, the orientation only towards knowledge upon admission in this context means that the applicant and his family are not inclined to enter into informal relations for the sake of entering a university. But this does not at all indicate that such applicants will not use the services of tutors, it’s just that the perception of a tutor in this case is different - this is a person (a teacher or a university lecturer, just a certain specialist) who transfers knowledge, and does not “help with admission” .

Orientation to knowledge and money or/and connections among 51.2% of applicants indicates that the applicant (his family) believes that knowledge alone may not be enough, and one must insure either money or connections. In this case, the tutor performs a dual role - he must both teach and provide support to his client upon admission. The forms of this support can be different - from withdrawing to the right people to transferring money. Sometimes, however, a tutor can only teach, and intermediaries for transferring money are sought independently of him. And, finally, the third category of applicants openly counts only on money or connections. At the same time, a tutor can also be taken, but his payment is actually the mechanism for paying for admission: this is the person who pushes into the university - we are no longer talking about transferring knowledge.

The extremely high proportion of those who consider it necessary to use money and connections when entering a university (more than 2/3) indicates that persistent clichés arise in public opinion, which university can be entered “without money”, and which “only with money or connections. Accordingly, entry strategies are built, the choice of a university is made, and ideas are formed about the availability or inaccessibility of higher education among various groups of the population. It is characteristic that the concept of accessibility is increasingly supplemented by the words "quality education". In this context, it is no longer significant that higher education has become accessible at all, but that certain segments of it have become even more inaccessible.

3. The role of the USE in the accessibility of higher education

Because of this, the unified state exam should and will be perceived extremely ambiguously in society. The idea of ​​the USE as a tool to fight corruption in entrance examinations or tutoring (which is far from the same thing) does not exhaust even a small fraction of the understanding (or misunderstanding) of this tool. When they say that the USE increases the accessibility of higher education, then in a situation where it has already become accessible, this statement is of little worth. The answer to the question of who exactly and what kind of education will become available as a result of the introduction of the USE becomes the most important. Obviously, a prestigious education will never be enough for everyone - that's why it is prestigious (which includes a certain restriction of access). It will also not be possible to create a mass good higher education in a short time (and in Russia the contingent of university students has grown by 2.4 times over 15 years). The process of massization of higher education in the country is proceeding at an unprecedentedly fast pace (similar processes in the republics of the former USSR, as well as other countries with economies in transition, still have not acquired such a scale), and the quality of education in its traditional sense will inevitably fall in these conditions. Therefore, if earlier it was possible to talk about fixing a certain quality and expanding accessibility, now the achieved level of accessibility must be provided with at least some acceptable quality. At the same time, given the limited budget funds and effective demand of the population, this task cannot be solved simultaneously for the entire system of higher education. It would be more practical and honest to legitimize the differentiation of universities, especially since at the moment everyone knows that they differ in the quality of education. It is the explicit fixation of differences in the quality of the educational program that could become the basis for posing the problem of accessibility, since the question would no longer be raised about the accessibility of higher education in general, but in relation to a specific category of higher education institutions. But to legitimize the differentiation of universities in terms of prestige or the quality of the educational program (which, generally speaking, does not always coincide) means at the same time to legitimize the differences in their budgetary financing. They - these differences - exist at the present time, but they are informal (exclusive). To make them formal and clearly defined is, on the one hand, to fix some rules of the game, and on the other hand, to explicitly prescribe the responsibilities of those universities that are at the top. In other words, formalization will also affect the rights and responsibilities of the parties, and whether the parties are ready for this is a big question. The idea of ​​GIFO - state nominal financial obligations - no matter how controversial it was in itself, this problem made it possible to fix this problem very clearly: many prestigious universities, to which all applicants would come, even with the highest GIFO category - the 1st category, would not receive those the budget they currently receive. And, besides, it could have happened that they would have come with lower categories of GIFO, which would have jeopardized the financial well-being of these universities.

At the same time, the lack of formalization of differences in the situation of universities leads to the fact that teachers of even very prestigious educational institutions receive very small wages, and tutoring becomes an almost obligatory means for them to stay teaching at a university. Our calculations show that, on average, a tutor receives about 100-150 thousand rubles a year. or about 8-12 thousand rubles. per month. Taking into account that the budgetary salary of even a professor is on average 5.5 thousand rubles, we find that the tutoring “appendage” provides an income for a university teacher somewhat higher than the average salary in industry or the average salary in such an industry as non-ferrous metallurgy. Naturally, prices and incomes are highly differentiated in this sector.

If we look at the problem of the USE from these positions, then it will come out in a slightly different perspective. Already at the present time, in the course of the experiment on a single exam, an active redistribution of tutoring income towards the teaching corps has begun. In general, the rates for tutoring in those regions where the USE is held are starting to fall. At the same time, it can be expected that at the same time the prices for paid education in universities will begin to rise, otherwise, the problem of the staffing of universities, which is already quite acute, will become even more aggravated. It should be noted that tuition fees in state and municipal universities of the country are growing by 15-25% annually, while in non-state universities the rate of growth in tuition fees has begun to noticeably lag behind state ones.

The USE experiment revealed another regularity - the results of the unified exam depend quite strongly on the size of the school: the more students in the school, the higher, all other things being equal, the average score obtained by its graduates when passing the USE. In the Samara region, only for schools with more than 500 students, the score obtained by graduates exceeds the average score for the USE. This situation is easy to explain - a large school has both the best staff and the best educational base. It follows that with a full-scale transition to the Unified State Examination, first of all, graduates of large schools will have access to prestigious higher education. Since such schools are mainly concentrated in the city, the path to prestigious higher educational institutions will be less accessible for children from the village. The children of small and medium-sized towns again find themselves in an unenviable position. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to predict what impact the school consolidation policy may have on the quality of school education and on the accessibility of high-quality higher education. However, without such a policy, in the current demographic situation, the number of schools will be reduced, and the learning outcomes may be very low. True, a decrease in the average USE score will again change the situation with access to higher education that will be considered high-quality.

Summary

In general, we can conclude that the problem of access to higher education in recent years has acquired new perspectives. On average, higher education has become much more accessible. But for a particular school graduate, this “on average” is not very important. For him, the accessibility of the university where he wants to enter is important. And it may well turn out that this university has not become more accessible to him. Therefore, the time has come not just to look for tools to increase the accessibility of higher education as such, but, finally, to move on to particulars and evaluate how many graduates, although they entered higher educational institutions, did not achieve their goal. In other words, we are talking not so much about the volume of higher education, but about its structure, and if the volume is consistent, the structure, which is very noticeable, does not meet the needs and expectations of the population. It also does not meet the needs of the labor market, the employer. However, this is a topic for another discussion.

Literature

1. Antonov A.S. Accessibility of education as a social problem (differentiation of access to higher education and the attitude of the population towards it) / Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 2009.

Drogobytsky I.N. On the issue of predicting indicators of the development of the educational sphere / Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 2007.

Krasnozhenova G.F. The current state and prospects for the development of scientific and teaching staff of higher education. M., MGAPI, 2006.

4. Kravchenko AI Fundamentals of sociology: textbook. - M.: ed. Center "Academy", 2005.

Radugin A.A., Radugin K.A. Sociology: a course of lectures. - M.: Center, 2008.

Sociology: Fundamentals of a General Theory / Edited by G.V. Osipova, L.N. Moskvichev. - M.: Aspect Press, 2006.

The general socio-economic and demographic situation in the republic has recently led to an aggravation of the problems of access to quality education and the subsequent employment of young people living in rural areas.

Much is said and written about the rural school. The content of both scientific works and near-scientific studies of the network of rural general education schools is far from unambiguous. However, events in our republic are inexorably developing in the direction - schools are being cut. The economy should be economical, and the costs of maintaining rural schools are recognized as inefficient.

Optimization of rural schools in order to develop education in the countryside and create conditions for ensuring the availability and high quality of rural education is one of the priority areas for the modernization of education in the PMR. From the analytical reports of the heads of rural schools it follows that, thanks to the opening of specialized classes, over the past two years the quality of education of graduates has improved, the percentage of admission to higher and secondary vocational schools has increased. But, as school directors note, the vast majority of graduates of rural schools who entered universities do not return to their native village. Therefore, no matter how paradoxical it may seem, more accessible higher education contributes to the fact that the village remains without an influx of young personnel.

The main problem of rural society: lack of life prospects

for most of the villagers. Depression, the burden of economic problems that have collapsed, isolates the family, leaving it alone with its troubles. There is a sharp decline in the living standards of many families, a deterioration in the social well-being of adolescents and young people, parents with minor children. The consequence is the disintegration of spiritual values, manifested in the loss of ideals, confusion, pessimism, a crisis of self-realization, lack of trust in relation to older generations and official state structures, which gives rise to legal nihilism. But at the same time, the school remained the only stable functioning social institution in the countryside: “For us, the very presence of a teacher in the countryside, a rural intellectual who sets the cultural level for the environment, is very important. Remove the teacher from the village and you will have a degrading environment. The rural school, without a doubt, is a means of cultivating the environment, the social stability of the rural society.

In the same environment of spiritual vacuum there is also a rural teacher. Today there is a need to include in the work of the Pridnestrovian State Institute for the Development of Education the most effective of the many ways to preserve the teacher's culture in the countryside, namely the system of advanced training of teachers on a cumulative basis. Such a system of activities includes:

System seminars with visits to individual organizations of general education;

work as part of the teaching staff, ensuring the involvement of rural teachers in the organizational and technological support of seminars at the republican level along with representatives of city organizations of general education, organizations of primary and secondary vocational education (conferences, exhibitions, presentations, etc.).

A society that is in the conditions of general modernization requires the ability of a teenager to quickly adapt to new conditions of existence. A teacher working in a rural area faces a problem: how to preserve the moral qualities of a growing person in conditions of fierce market competition, a shift in the value vector of a person from high ideals to ideals of material prosperity, profit.

During the school period, children, adolescents, youth are not consistently included in the sphere of society, do not participate in the discussion of the problems that adults live with - labor, economic, environmental, socio-political, etc. And this leads to infantilism, selfishness, spiritual emptiness , to an acute internal conflict and an artificial delay in the personal development of young people, deprives them of the opportunity to take an active social position. The teaching staff considers special forms of school self-government to be the most effective means of forming and developing an active social position of the growing villagers. The specificity of these forms lies in the fact that, on the one hand, they combine the active participation of students in the actions traditional for our territory (for example, in the days of school self-government), on the other hand, they include them in the social life of their native village. Among the non-traditional means of forming an active life position of the growing villagers are the functioning of the Children's Services, which take part in rural gatherings, the work that organizes creative exhibitions of joint family work of students and their parents, and much more.

The problem of a different plan is the failure to take into account the gender, age, individual and other characteristics of students. Not all types of activities organized by a rural school contribute to the development of spiritual culture in children and adolescents. Often the emphasis is on the quality of knowledge, and not on the mental and spiritual development of schoolchildren. However, teachers of rural educational institutions who initiate modernization processes note a number of important aspects:

• · the school, being in most cases the only cultural center of the village, has a significant impact on its development; it is important to establish close interaction between the school and the social environment in order to use its potential in educational work;
• limited opportunities for self-education of rural schoolchildren,
• The absence of institutions of additional education, institutions of culture and leisure necessitates the organization of cognitive activity of students during extracurricular time on the basis of the school and the expediency of using circle and club-type associations for this, which include schoolchildren of different ages, teachers, parents, social partners (representatives of the village administration) depending on their interests and abilities;
• · favorable conditions are formed in the rural school for the use in educational work of the surrounding nature, traditions preserved in the village, folk art, rich spiritual potential;
• · in the life of a rural student, a significant place is occupied by labor activity, which, with the irrational organization of a change in the types of activities of a teenager, affects the decrease in the importance of education in general in the countryside.

Rural teachers admit that the work of the school with the family is carried out at an insufficient level, which largely determines the civic passivity of parents in relation to the fate of children. Unfortunately, at this stage, in most rural general education organizations, work with parents has the character of one-time actions. The effectiveness of these activities is indisputable, however, it is not possible to assess their systemic effectiveness in shaping the civic engagement of parents.

It also seems problematic that parents, teachers and educators attribute health to the leading values, and in real life in the countryside, studies note an increase in drug trafficking, smoking, and drunkenness. It seems interesting in terms of the formation of a value attitude to the health of future defenders of the Fatherland, which involves organizing the work of a field camp in the summer. The idea of ​​paramilitary camps is certainly not innovative. However, this approach to the conditions, factors, details of the implementation of this idea makes it really effective. For the head of the camp, educators, leaders of initial military training, each shift in such a camp is a carefully modeled business game. Being in a militarized environment, the boys learn to act in emergency situations, comprehend the basics of first aid, learn interesting information about the latest military equipment. Feeling the elbow of a comrade, realizing their responsibility for his life in an emergency, adolescents acquire a different view of their own life and health.

Unfortunately, the predominant number of teachers from rural educational organizations consider the transfer of knowledge, skills and abilities to students as their main task. However, the question of the effective application in life of the knowledge, skills and abilities acquired at school remains for the independent decision of graduates and their parents.

One of the most important success factors in modern life is access to modern information. It is no secret that residents of many rural settlements are deprived of the opportunity to connect to information networks. This fact brings the greatest damage to that part of the rural population that is able and ready to carry out self-education. It becomes impossible to implement distance learning.

In overcoming the crisis of education in the context of socio-economic changes, we understand that this is possible only on the basis of a detailed strategy that takes into account both the real situation in the field of education, the trends and relations operating in it, and the individual affairs of each school.

In our time, the educational opportunities of rural society have decreased.

The school becomes the only means of spiritual revival of the village. Of course, one school cannot resolve all crises, but a rural school can help a maturing person realize the principle of free civic choice, ready for a reasonable choice of life positions. Such a graduate will be successful in life and work.

The consequences of all the above processes for the accessibility of education to the citizens of the country are ambiguous. If we consider the aggregate quantitative indicators of the development of the higher education system in Russia, they indicate an increase in the accessibility of vocational education. Thus, the number of university students has doubled over the past ten years, while the number of persons aged 15 to 24 has grown by only 12%. State statistics on the number of 11th grade graduates and university enrollment have been converging in recent years: in 2000, graduation was 1.5 million schoolchildren, enrollment was 1.3 million students. Russian legislation establishes that at least 170 students per 10,000 population should study free of charge. In fact, in 2000, 193 students per 10,000 people were educated at the expense of budgetary funds.
However, changes in the accessibility of higher education appear in a very different light when changes in the structure of education funding and in the quality of educational services provided are taken into account. The growth in the total number of students was ensured mainly due to the expansion of paid admission. For admission to universities for free places, the parents of many applicants have to make informal payments. All this casts doubt on the conclusion about increasing the accessibility of higher education.
The growth in non-government spending on education, although very significant, did not fully compensate for the reduction in public funding. This gives grounds for concluding that the quality of educational services has generally been declining. The dynamics of indicators of the development of the education system in Russia in the last decade and numerous observational data indicate an increase in the differentiation of higher education services in terms of their quality. Thus, significant changes have taken place in the ratio of full-time, evening and correspondence courses. The number of students using part-time education is growing most rapidly, especially in non-state universities, where admission to correspondence departments in 2000 exceeded admission to full-time departments. Correspondence education is becoming increasingly important, its expansion is natural due to the relevance of the task of continuous education; but it must be admitted that at present, domestic correspondence education, as a rule, is inferior in quality to full-time education. Meanwhile, about 40% of students are now studying by correspondence (in the early 1990s, about a quarter).
Two subsystems have formed in the Russian system of higher education: one is elite education, characterized by a high quality of services provided, and the other is mass higher education of low quality. Higher education of poor quality can, with some assumptions, be called relatively affordable. Opportunities for obtaining an education that provides a high quality of professional training for future specialists, apparently, have declined for the majority of the population.
Differences in the accessibility of higher education are determined by differences between people in a number of characteristics, including:
- ability level;
- the quality of the received general education;
- the volume and quality of additional educational services received (additional subjects in schools, university preparation courses, tutoring services, etc.);
- the level of awareness about the possibilities of training in various specialties in various universities;
- physical abilities (for example, the presence of a disability that does not affect the ability to acquire knowledge, but limits the ability to participate in the educational process);
- composition of the family, level of education and social capital of its members;
- economic well-being of the family (level of income, etc.);
- location;
- other factors.
Available studies show that the factors of socio-economic differentiation very significantly limit the accessibility of universities for the general population, especially universities that provide high-quality educational services. At the same time, the greatest limitations arise due to differences in:
1) the level of household income: members of low-income families have the worst opportunities to enter universities;
2) place of residence: residents of rural areas and small towns, as well as residents of depressed regions, are in the worst situation; the accessibility of higher education is also affected by the differentiation of regions in terms of the availability of universities;
3) the level of general secondary education received: there is a differentiation of schools in terms of the quality of education, while the decrease in the level of training in some is combined with the presence of a limited number of “elite” schools, the quality of training of graduates of which is growing.
The level of family income affects the accessibility of higher education both directly, by determining the possibilities of paying for the actual education, and indirectly. Indirect influence is connected, firstly, with the possibility of implementing, in addition to the actual costs of education, the cost of travel to the place of study for non-residents, the cost of supporting the life of a student during training - the cost of housing, meals, etc. For the majority of families living in rural areas and cities that do not have their own universities, the expenses for the applicant's travel to the location of the university and for living in another city are unaffordable. Secondly, this influence is expressed in the dependence between the level of family well-being and social and human capital, which are inherited and act as factors of differentiation in access to higher education.
The following categories of persons can be classified as socially disadvantaged in the opportunities to receive quality education:
- graduates of rural schools;
- graduates of “weak” schools in different settlements;
- residents of remote settlements and regions;
- residents of regions with poor educational infrastructure;
- residents of depressed regions;
- members of poor families;
- members of incomplete families;
- members of socially disadvantaged families;
- homeless children;
- graduates of orphanages.
- disabled people;
- migrants;
- representatives of national and religious minorities.