OREANDA-NEWS. ‘Expert RA’ rating agency, with support of ‘Volnoe Delo’ Oleg Deripaska Foundation, publishes the second annual rating of Russian universities. A comprehensive survey included the statistics analysis and large-scale interviews with more than 4,000 respondents: employers, representatives of academic and scientific communities, students and graduates.

M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), N.E. Bauman Moscow State Technical University, St. Petersburg State University and National Research Nuclear University ‘MEPhI’ became the rating leaders.

According to the survey, consolidation of universities has not yielded any tangible benefits so far. The biggest universities (more than 20,000 students) have not yet learned how to use the new scale. Eight of these educational institutions went down in the rating, and just five of them stepped up (including the Moscow State University of Railway Engineering (MIIT), Perm National Research Polytechnic University, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, National Research Irkutsk State Technical University, Tyumen State Oil and Gas University). The key reason for weakening of the major universities’ positions is deterioration of training conditions, which, in particular, manifested itself in reduced financing per student and a decreased number of professors for students.