Education in the Russian Federation: problems and tendencies of development in the beginning of the XXIst century

In the last decade - 2000-2010 - Russia's system of education has gone through major changes. First of all, the proportion of people with higher education has exceeded 28.2%. If those with secondary vocational education (27.1%) are to be included, the overall proportion of population with tertiary education (according to world classifications) would account for over 55%. Russia's leadership is as well uncontested with respect to the number of students involved in secondary and tertiary professional education institutions - 673 in every 10 thousand of population. At the same time current demographic situation negatively affects the development of professional education in Russian Federation. In the last few years there has been a steady decrease in the number of students, including those, who aspire for higher education (starting from 2009/10). Thus, in the nearest future the existing models of professional education institutions, which were to solve the problem of accessibility of such education, are expected to change. The decrease in the number of students would as well affect the system of education finance. Starting from 2004 the budget finance of all levels of education grew rapidly. While in 2000s higher education institutions principally sought for the expansion of non-budget finance (since it accounted for the larger part of their financial resources), today they mostly compete for attracting budget students, since non-budget students have re-orientated themselves towards the relatively cheaper extramural and non-state education. At the same time the proportion of students on budget finance (among the students in state and non-state education) continues to decrease: in 2009 it accounted for 37.2% against 38% in the previous year. The growth of budget finance in basic and secondary vocational training has been rather moderate as compared to the higher education, although the absolute investments have grown significantly in the last 10 years. And yet the real expenditures were not as high, moreover they have started to decrease since 2007 for basic vocational training and since 2009 for secondary vocational training. In 2005-2010 the government effort has been to support the growth of wages for education workers. The new labor compensation system has been introduced, which actually was one of the major requirement for the regions of Russian Federation to participate in the National Priority Project for Education. Nevertheless, little success has been