This year, 460 school-leavers from Chelyabinsk Region will be given a chance to enter a college or a university with the help of the Governor’s full scholarship. The scholarship was introduced eleven years ago, and 3,500 people have used so far. The initial idea behind the introduction of the scholarship was to provide enough highly skilled college graduates for rural areas and small towns. Nevertheless, young people tend to prefer the urban lifestyle lately, so only about a half of students actually go back to villages and towns after getting their diplomas. This is why Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin decided to modify the system of scholarship distribution a bit.

In its original version, the system worked in the following way: a school-leaver who’s passed their united state exam successfully could place an application with their village or town’s committee. The committee would then look into whether the application met the Governor’s scholarship requirements and whether it met the town’s needs for a particular kind of skilled workers. Then, the Ministry of Education would choose a certain college for the student. In fact, most colleges’ admission offices employed special clerks to deal with the applications for Governor’s scholarships. The applicant would only have to pay 10,000 RUR for clerks and committees’ paperwork; their tuition fees would be covered by the federal budget.

In 2009, the system will undergo substantial changes. Only 200 scholarships will be offered, and the financing will come from the region’s budget this time. The spokesperson for the Governor reports 10 million RUR will be allocated next year. Every applicant will have to sign a trilateral contract with the town or village they live in and the university or college. The Ministry of Education is currently working on three financing schemes: through subsidizing towns and villages, through allocating regional budget’s resources to respective ministries, or through allocating regional budget’s resources to the Ministry of Education. In whichever case, payments will have to be made each semester and will depend on the student’s performance. The new scheme means the town council and the college can always cancel an agreement they have with the student who does not meet their contractual obligations. The town council, in its turn, must provide the graduate with housing and a job with a good salary.

In addition to these changes, fewer majors will be covered by the program this year. Chelyabinsk Region’s Deputy Minister for Education and Science Tatiana Kalugina says they will only cater for specializations which rural areas and small towns really need, like teachers, doctors, agronomists, and civil engineers.

‘We often get applications for college majors that would obviously be inapplicable in this particular village or town,’ Tatiana Kalugina notes.

To sum up, all the changes in the scholarship program are expected to cut down on the number of graduates who never go back to their native town or village and prevent the misapplication of funding.