Universities and colleges are ranking from the point of view of the prospects for employment of graduates

In June, Rostrud will first present a series of ratings of universities and colleges in terms of the success of the employment of their graduates, follows from the decision adopted by the government. Data for the rating – about the median salary and employment in the second year after release – the service will receive from the social fund. Thus, a new ranking list of educational organizations promises to be quite objective and, as officials and experts believe, will be able to help applicants better understand their prospects in the labor market.

Adopted by the government Resolution “On the formation and publication of national ratings of educational organizations of higher education and professional educational organizations” regulates the emergence of a system for assessing the quality of education in the Russian Federation from the point of view of employment of graduates. The author of the document was the Ministry of Labor, the preparation of such ratings is provided for by the national project « Personnel ».

The innovation will be a point system for evaluating colleges and universities in various directions. In total, with its help, almost 5 thousand federal and regional educational organizations will be rated.

University ratings will be formed according to the fields of training specialists: from mathematical and natural sciences to art and culture. As noted in the press service of the Ministry of Labor, if the educational organization is underway in several areas at once, then it will be reflected in several rating blocks. “Thus, one educational institution may have different positions in the ranking in various areas of preparation,” the ministry explains.

Colleges will be rated in groups. In particular, they will be compiled taking into account 24 priority sectors, for which traffic is being prepared as part of the Professor project, including atomic, mining, transport, construction, pharmaceutical and chemical industries, IT, art and creative industries, medicine, mechanical engineering, metallurgy, pedagogy, and agriculture. Five departmental colleges groups will also be formed.

Two main indicators of the work of graduates who are planned to be taken into account in the ratings are the size of the average monthly median salary and the share of employed at the second year after graduating from the educational institution.

The Rostrud rating operator will receive this information from the social fund. The Ministry of Labor plans to submit a methodology describing the definition of a place in the ranking later. It is planned to publish results annually. This year – in June, then – in April.

The Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education Dmitry Afanasyev notes that a new tool for evaluating the activities of educational organizations on the quality of employment is part of the agency’s efforts to build a flexible and effective system for training highly qualified specialists in accordance with the needs of the labor market.

“We proceed from the fact that you need to go to the university consciously, planning your further professional trajectory in advance,” says the deputy minister. At the same time, he notes that the rating is aimed exclusively at assessing the quality of employment and cannot replace a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of universities: “After all, in addition to educational activities, universities conduct demanded scientific research and play an important role in regional development.”

According to Elena Kuznetsova, the head of the Yakov and Partners Institute for Economics, the emergence of ratings is an important step in the part of providing applicants and their parents with reliable information about prospects after training in a particular university.

“If we rely on objective data on the labor trajectories of graduates, we level the influence of advertising, fashion, and so on. As a result, for example, the influx of students can increase in good regional universities with established ties with employers, ”the expert notes.

“Higher education is received in order to have a return from it, and an objective assessment of what program this return on the labor market is higher will be very useful. Therefore, national ratings will become an important tool for the development of the education system, as well as the labor market, ”says Sergey Roshchin, vice -rector of the Higher School of Economics.

Anastasia Manuilova