Admission campaign-2023 failed engineering and left applicants in the regions

As analysts predicted, it happened – the unpopularity of engineering specialties has already been recognized by the Ministry of Education and Science. If only because, initially, 20,000 fewer applicants passed profile mathematics at the Unified State Examination this year than in the past. “The reason, in my opinion, is that the mathematics at the Unified State Exam was too difficult this year,” says Irina Abankina, a leading expert in the field of education, professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. And physics was chosen even less, 96 thousand people across the country.

Well, those who overcame the “Olympiad” mathematics in 2023 enrolled in IT en masse. It is curious that a study conducted by the largest Russian company in the field of information technology showed that programmers, analysts or software developers go not only because of high salaries. In first place (61%) was the opportunity to work remotely. On the second – “dream fulfillment”, and only then “high income”. However, in relation to engineering, the same Muscovites put the problems of employment at the forefront – they say, it is not clear where to work here with such a specialty.

Universities, especially technical universities, this year tried to outdo each other in bonuses for applicants. Somewhere they even paid money to lure smart heads. For example, KFU offered 100,000 for each incoming 100 points (200,000 for 200 points and 300 for 300). Tomsk Polytechnic University announced guaranteed admission to a number of specialties. The bottom line is that the owners of a certain USE score were credited to the budget in advance, even if in the end this score increased during the competition.

Even the famous Moscow State Technical University. Bauman in Moscow this year embarked on such a trick as a list of specialties in the field of energy and mechanical engineering, marked “low competition” and “a great chance to enter with low scores in the Unified State Examination.” Here, as in the past year, indecisiveness, the fear of not guessing the university, played a bad joke on the enrollment. And choose a place ahead of time.

– We knew in advance that the budget in a prestigious university is not shining, – says Ilnara from Mytishchi. – The son wrote the exam for 249 points, they chose a technical Moscow university. It is clear that not the top, but from the second or third row. He set his sights on MIREA, but in recent days he went crazy and transferred the original (certificate – author) to StankIn for the same specialty. But it turned out that in Stankin the score rose, but not in MIREA. He would have gone there, but it turns out he miscalculated. I didn’t even meddle in Baumanka …

It turns out that it was not in vain that experts advised this year with an innovation in the form of a system of priorities, to add 10-20 percent to the average score in each university over three years to assess your score. But the collapse in the lists due to unoccupied budget places, as in 2022, which some risky applicants bet on, did not happen.

Another negative feature of this year’s admission, many call the inability to navigate the lists of applicants. Few universities, including TPU, Phystech, Polytechnic University in St. Petersburg, have made understandable sites with lists. With the rest, it was “at least go to a fortuneteller,” especially on the last day of submitting originals. No matter how hard they tried to avoid this, medical and pedagogical universities, Moscow State University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, St. Petersburg State University and many others survived the pilgrimage in admissions committees.

“Many in the queues cursed why the time for receiving certificates was moved from 6 pm to 12 pm, they were afraid that they would not have time to apply,” says Ilya Sonin, a member of the admission committee of the medical university. – We still had nothing, but at the “dentists” we had to separate the queue, it almost came to a fight there.

The State Portal, which was so praised, did not perform well on the crucial day of August 3. “You can’t see competitors”, “statuses are slowly changing or doubling, like you are enrolled in two universities at once”, “the passing score has increased by 40 points, there is nothing to catch, but you don’t see it,” upset applicants report.

To exclude “Russian roulette” from the process of entering universities, the proposal sounds the same: to make the system of priorities unified. And maybe only email. That is, one application, where all universities, specialties and forms of education for which the applicant is ready are ranked. And visual movement in real time to assess the chances of each. Which is impossible now, when each university has its own list. And while there are paper and electronic filing of documents, these two streams “do not see” each other.

In the meantime, applicants and their parents are forced to rush about or immediately prepare money for paid education. The price of the issue in Moscow is at least a million rubles a year in not the coolest university, but in a prestigious direction: Information technology, advertising, architecture and design, applied economics, psychology, pedagogy. Tops in Moscow are 2-2.5 million rubles a year.

Another sign of the times was the smaller number of applicants from the provinces in the capitals. Although not everything is homogeneous in the regions: high competition for the best universities in the Urals, Western Siberia, Samara, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, etc. And the outflow from the North, from Murmansk, for example: in the United Arctic, for example, there is a “severe shortage”.

A large number of beneficiaries, target recipients and those who enter without entrance tests also contribute to the picture of admission-2023. Still, this year another, additional quota has been introduced and its size is 10% of the budget in each university. Although the enrollment target figures were set in advance, it is impossible to say that the increase in beneficiaries did not affect anything. There is a reduction in budget places for “deficient” specialties. “Where there were 7 places, now there are 5, where there were 3 – one,” applicants complain. Of course, such competition is mainly Moscow universities and areas of IT, biotechnology, medicine … Then an applicant with a dream, but with average scores, who cannot study for a fee, has to choose the lowest priority, or a non-prestigious university, or go to study in the provinces.

Someone on the topic of beneficiaries is trying to hype this year. In public, you can find stories that “they take everyone not only who has at least some relation to the NMD, but simply to the military,” especially in the regions. And one social network was rattled by a video of a certain young man who claims that he entered the Phystech with 127 points on the Unified State Examination under a new benefit. And I did not pass profile mathematics! Well, if you simply can’t believe in a half passing score for “Information Technology” at MIPT, you won’t be admitted to such universities without basic mathematics. An applicant with such knowledge will still not be able to study there.