Dmitry Livanov: Recommendations of the Russian Minister of Education and Science to stop admitting entrants to universities have been agreed with regions

On June 30, Russian Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov commented on the situation with branches of universities, which were recommended to stop admitting new entrants in 2014 and answered the journalists’ questions within the framework of All-Russia meeting of heads of educational executive authorities of Russian regions held in Kazan.

To the point, the Russian Ministry of Education and Science have sent a corresponding letter to 60 universities. "We want that every university and its branch which admitted students, guarantee a high level of training and good quality education. The results of the latest monitoring showed that some branches of universities are not ready to provide these conditions for their future students today. Therefore, we recommended several dozens of universities that have such branches to stop admitting new entrants this year,” Dmitry Livanov said.

According to him, these recommendations did not refer to technical specialities, but only to the non-core specialities at branches of technical universities and those branches that train students in economy, humanities and similar sciences. "All these have been agreed with the respective regions," Dmitry Livanov said.

This year, the Unified State Examination (USE) was held at a very high level of objectivity, the number of violations has been minimal, and exam results reflect the level of training of graduates, the Minister said. "It is extremely important for us, because due to the objective diagnosis of the education system, we can make correct, well-founded conclusions about what should be changed in the system," he pointed out.