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August 9, 2004
Student enrollments are up, and multinationals are chasing grads
By Jason Bush in Moscow
Summary prepared by Hayk Sargsyan of CDI

It's an emerging-market economy that still suffers from widespread poverty - but somehow manages to produce more than 200,000 science grads a year. Students so well-trained in computer science, physics, mathematics, and engineering, that growing numbers are being snapped up by some of the world's biggest tech companies. India? Wrong. China? Nope. The correct answer is Russia. "We continue to see very good students come out of the universities," says Steve Chase, president of Intel (INTC) Russia. When it comes to writing complex computer programs, "the Russians are absolutely tops," he adds.

It's one of Russia's surprising survival stories - the resurgence of the country's once-superb scientific education system. State funding for scientific research and education plummeted with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and many of Russia's best and brightest left the country, lured by higher-paying jobs abroad. But Russia's universities and scientific institutes are slowly adapting to the harsh realities of a market economy, by tapping private funding and research contracts and forming partnerships with international heavyweights such as Intel, IBM (IBM), and Cisco Systems (CSCO).

That's the good news. The bad news is that the ranks of Russian academia are thinning, as most of the newly minted science grads are recruited by the private sector or foreign universities. Without an influx of qualified teachers, Russian science may be living on borrowed time.

For now, at least, Russians young and old continue to wow the world with their scientific and mathematical talent. As has happened in three of the past five years, a Russian university won top honors at the 2004 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, an IBM-sponsored competition that Pits University teams from around the world against each other in solving complex problems. Universities in the ex-Soviet Union took 10 of the top 30 slots this year.

The system might have collapsed altogether without a recent increase in state support, made possible by Russia's economic revival since the end of the 1990s, coupled with a growing stream of private funding. Government spending on science is up by 90% since 1998, although it remains a fraction of what it was under communism. Newly minted grads are opting out of teaching, so Russia's professorial ranks are graying. "The main problem is low salaries," says Walter Pogosov, 28, a recent graduate of Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology, who now works as a postdoctoral researcher at Okayama University in Japan. Pogosov earns $3,700 a month in Japan, while an assistant professor in Russia collects a mere $100 a month. He says around half of his classmates are working or studying abroad, while others have become millionaires in Russia by ditching science for banking or business. A further boost in state funding would help enormously. Despite the increases in recent years, Russia spends just 1.24% of gross domestic product on research and development, half the level of France or Germany, and a 60% decline from 1990 levels.