Education in Post-Soviet Russia: Marketisation, Financialisation and Bureacratisation – The Case of Universities

Abstract

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, market relations and institutions have begun vigorously penetrating not only the fields of production and services, but also the social sphere. In this text, the author reveals the contradictions implicit in the transformations that over 30 years have occurred in post-Soviet Russia in the field of education and that have seen the total marketisation of this area. As an example, the article examines Russian universities. The process of marketisation of university education has taken the direct forms of the establishment of private universities and the introduction of paid tuition in state universities, and also of changes to the administrative structures of universities, to the content of instruction programmes, and to assessment of the quality of the education received by students as well as of the outcomes of the activity both of university teachers and of the institutions as a whole.