Russia Backs Sending Top Students Abroad With a Catch 167
First time accepted submitter Clark Schultz writes "Vladimir Putin plans to send the country's top domestic students abroad in an effort to prepare engineers, doctors, and scientists with the most modern education. The initiative comes with a catch: Students must return to Mother Russia to work. Though critics say that the students may be tempted to stay abroad after receiving their advanced degrees, Putin is confident they will be properly motivated to keep up their end of the bargain. As one advocate notes, the 'brilliant' practice of educating Russians at top global universities dates back to the times of Peter the Great."
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, they have apparently been accepting grants all along, for many years, but never coming back.
The new decree (Do they not pass laws over there?) simply says:
Students who earned bachelor's degrees in Russian universities may enter leading [foreign] universities... and be eligible for financial support from the government.
If these students would like to stay overseas after graduation, they would have to pay a hefty amount to Russia that would include all the money spent on the education plus a fine twice as large as this amount.
Good luck collecting, unless they want to hire a boat load of lawyers in each country students go to. (If they thought US tuition was high, wait till they see US lawyer bills). Maybe they will get the parents to co-sign these grants so they can at least threaten to put the parents in the hot seat if young Doctor Ivan doesn't come back.
With US student loans defaulting at a rate of 10% [ed.gov] they are just as likely to learn bad habits here.
On the other hand if you can legally wipe out all or most of your student loans by getting a good paying job in Russia (by virtue of your prestigious foreign doctorate), it just might work.
It all depends on the job and pay opportunities at home, and how much of the government loans will be forgiven. It might be pretty hard to pay back a western sized debt on a Russian sized salary unless most or all of it were forgiven by the Russian Government.
France for instance not only subsidizes students that enter the top univerisities (ecole polytechnique and ecole normale superieur among others) but it also pays the students a stipend. The catch is that once you graduate you owe the French state 10 years of your life. After that you can enter if you want the private sector, but the first ten years must be given back to the public sector. Else you must reimburse the money the French state invested in your education. And you can bet your ass they do come after you if you don't uphold your end of the bargain.
Russia is doing nothing alien. They pay for their student's education, even paying their stay abroad. It is only natural those students give back to the Russian state some years of their lives.
Only in the US (temple of individuality) does the state subsidize your studies (if you're fortunate enough) but then you are not compelled to give back. Individuality taken to the extreme, and then we ask ourselves why all the worlds big problems stem from that country.
Re:Is education really the problem in Russia? (Score:2, Informative)
I got my undergraduate education in Russia. No complaints. I teach at an ameican university, so I know what american undergraduate education looks like, on average. As far as exports go, this is not surprising: 1) it is easy to get into an american unirversity, as long as you have money, 2) a lot of other countries have even worse systems. We are talking about STEM (as it is fashionably called nowadays) education, so it very well may be that american univerisities provide excellent non-STEM education. As far as the STEM portion of it goes, the high school I went to (long time ago, admittedly, in Russia) taught more mathematics and science than our mathematics majors learn by their junior year. I had classes in chemistry (both organic and inorganc, two semesters each), physics (six semestes, including quantm mechanics and relativity, thermodynamics, electromagnetics, and optics), mathematics (starting with what is called `college geometry' here, calculus (1.5 so to speak), and algebra (including some simple group and graph theory)), biology (from btany to simple genetics). Oh, and six hours of electronics lab on Saturdays. I did not really have much social life (some not much) and have no regrets about it. College more than made up for that. The concept of proof in mathematics was ingrained in the seventh grade and I teach math seniors here who are scared of proofs.
The graduate education in the US IS excellent, however, mostly because we are not afraid to fail those who do not perform. There is a lot of talent in the US and at the graduate level the chance to interact with such a diverse (academically) faculty is invaluable for a graduate student.
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:3, Informative)
Only in the US (temple of individuality) does the state subsidize your studies (if you're fortunate enough) but then you are not compelled to give back. Individuality taken to the extreme, and then we ask ourselves why all the worlds big problems stem from that country.
The US actually has several such programs, like the ROTC, GI Bill, or the various doctors and nurses programs for Western states.