How is Doctoral Students’ Admission Arranged at Russian Universities?

Abstract

The paper examines the rules and procedures of the doctoral students’ admission at Russian universities. The inefficiency of the selection process often becomes the subject of discussion in the studies devoted to the low performance of Russian doctoral education, but these studies lack structured information about the current rules and procedures. The present research closes this gap. Using the quantitative content analysis of the local admission rules of 150 random Russian universities, we estimated the prevalence of various admission practices. Two groups of universities are compared in the study: those with and those without special statuses (federal, national research, flagship, participants of the «5-100» program), since the presence of such a status implies that the university implements a set of measures aimed at developing doctoral programs and increasing the graduate students’ demand. The results of the study show that despite the absence of the regulatory restrictions on the choice of selection tools, Russian universities tend to choose fairly formal procedures: traditional exams and consideration of the individual achievements (papers, patents, diploma with honors). More flexible tools to assess the applicant’s motivation, his or her research experience, and plans for a dissertation are extremely rare and appear in universities with special statuses. The results of the research can be useful for the heads of the doctoral education departments at Russian universities, as well as for other staff involved in the process of the doctoral students’ admission.