Die beliebteste Spezialität mit ausländischen Studierenden

According to the data released by the Centre for Social Research of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, in 2014–2015 academic year about 156,211 foreign students were enrolled in the Russian universities. Herewith, a medicine has become the most popular course among foreigners – it was chosen by 26 234 people that is almost 17%, the second most chosen course was economics and management preferred by 16.5% of students.

The third place was occupied by the humanities, including philosophy, history, political science and psychology. The total share of all of these areas was 11%.

The fourth most popular courses were Russian language and architecture chosen by approximately equal number of students – almost 4% for each subject.

Russian faculties of information security and forestry were in poor request as less than 1% of foreigners chose them last year.

Increasing the number of foreign students has become a priority for many universities of the country. So, the work in this direction was started by Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

In early September, the Federal Migration Service has proposed to simplify the procedure for obtaining registration for foreign students studying in Russian universities. In accordance with the existing rules, foreigners must annually prolong the term of the registration for one academic year. Now the FMS proposes to make this procedure for the registration’s renewal only one time and for the entire period of study as a whole.

In order to introduce the new rules, the experts of the FMS prepared the relevant amendments to the federal law “On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation”. However, in case a student is sent down from the university, his permit will be canceled.