Education: Knowing Much Teaches No Wits. “How Much is Russia”, FBK study

Another stage of the study of ‘How much is Russia: 10 years later’ devoted to education revealed no significant increase of weight of this important sector of the Russian economy. If in 2002 the portion of gross value added (GVA) in GDP was 2.9%, in 2012 it resulted in 3.0%.

The comparison with 28 states of the EU is by no means in favor of Russia: the average indicator for these countries in 2012 was 5.3%. The leading figures demonstrate such countries as Belgium – 7.2%, Cyprus – 6.9%, Great Britain and Portugal –6.2% each. The lowest figure in Europe is in Slovakia – 3.5%.

Igor Nikolayev, the FBK Institute of Strategic Analysis heading the study, drew attention to one more comparison among the countries: in Russia the share of population aged 25-64 with a higher education is one of the highest in the world – 53%. That is higher than, for example, in all the OECD countries where the average value of that indicator is 32%.

In the Soviet times the portion of people with higher education in that age group was at a level of about 15-20%.

However, the authors of the study believe, that the fact that Russia has the biggest portion of population with higher education and at the same time one of the lowest indicators for the education input in GDP of the country should put us on guard. Relatively inexpensive higher education (first of all from the point of view of costs of the educational institutions maintenance and remuneration of the teaching staff) cannot be of truly good quality under present-day conditions.

Along with that, the study characterized as a positive change that if in 2002 37% of the comprehensive schools needed capital repairs badly and 5.1% were in emergency state of buildings, in 2012 these figures were only 17.2% and 1.5%, respectively. In 2002 only 51.8% of the facilities had all kinds of improvements, and in 2012 – 75.7%.

Against the background of such changes it is not surprising that the cost of the education sector over the last ten years has grown by 27% and amounted to 140.8 bn roubles. The implementation of President’s decrees of May (2012) on the raise of salaries to the staff employed in the education sector also contributed to that result.

You can find more detailed research materials on the site skolko.ru.