Jobs squeeze leaves graduates stranded

Unemployment has soared to over 6 million in recent months and many of these are graduates who had previously been in high demand. However, the problem is not only unskilled graduates but also inefficient industry which does not cater for workers with higher education. Labour productivity in Russia is less than 30 per cent than that of the United States, partly because many workers are unsuited to their current jobs.
People want well-paid jobs, but most of the jobs are archaic and unproductive," said Yevgeny Yasin, the school's academic supervisor, who is a former economics minister. "A surplus of education in terms of the number of years people have spent at university leaves workers unmotivated and with low life satisfaction."
The government is already making plans to reform the education system as part of long-running changes, as well as to fight the crisis. A new program for 2012 has been approved by the government, which Education Minister Andrei Fursenko said a "huge amount of money" had been set aside for.
"We do not view them [our proposals] as a component of anti-crisis measures," said Fursenko. "We have been doing anti-crisis measures for five years. The crisis has cast a bright light on these problems."
Approximately half the 43 billion rouble ($1.3 billion) anti-crisis labour package will be set aside for education, supporting both universities and training blue-collar workers.
More money has been set aside to assist the estimated 15 per cent to 30 per cent of students will be unable to afford their fees in the next few years, with universities worrying that their best students might drop out. One university in Vladivostok has offered all Russian students free places next year, with the funds coming from an increased number of paying foreigners, while other universities appear set to offer similar schemes.
"We will enlarge the number of places for students to study for free but these kinds of measures only have small results because most universities don't have a lot of free budget places," said Yaroslav Kuzminov, rector of the Higher School of Economics. "We very regularly change students from paying to free so for us it won't change a lot."
Private universities will be the biggest casualties of more free places, with management and linguistics university LINK already noticing a decline in the number of postgraduate applications.
"It is very dangerous for us because it is possible that the number of graduates will be equal to the number of free places," said Andrei Shuinov, deputy rector of LINK. "Private universities may have no students at all."