April 7, 2015. Ural Federal University intends to enroll 20% fewer full-time students by 2020. Stricter eligibility and admission requirements will be introduced to reduce the number of students from 24,000 to 20,000 people, Rector Viktor Koksharov told the Expert Ural magazine.

‘This is one the things necessary to make our college more competitive. Applicants will have to face stricter requirements during the next enrollment campaign; for one, their Russian state exam scores will have to be higher than those recommended by Rosobrnadzor, so some of the applicants won’t get admitted because of low scores. We declined the applications of 500 people last year, for example, even though we actually needed 300 more students that we had,’ Koksharov said.

UFU offered UrBC no explanation on which departments will be affected.

‘We expect to enroll 20% fewer students by the year 2020. It isn’t quite clear at the moment which departments and fields of study will have to shrink or whether these cuts will involve students who pay their tuition fees out of their own pockets (as opposed to those on state scholarships). No official paper has been released yet. I believe things will grow clearer by the end of the 2015 enrollment campaign,’ their press service says.