How many students are there in Russia: statistics by year

2026-08-25 · Labour and employment in Russia

At the start of the 2024/2025 academic year, Russian universities enrolled 4.43 million people, colleges with secondary‑level programmes had another 3.27 million, and vocational schools 0.59 million. Together this is 8.29 million students. The peak of higher education was reached in 2010, when only universities had 7.05 million students, but since 2021 the figure is rising again. Data from Rosstat.

Below are the full series for universities and colleges, admissions and graduations since 2000, the share of paid education, forms of study and a comparison of Russia with other countries.

Students in Russia: table by education level

Number of students at the beginning of the academic year, thousand people.

Two lines move toward each other. Universities have lost 2.6 million people over fourteen years, colleges have gained 1.1 million. The gap between them narrowed from 4.9 million to 1.2 million. The full series for all three levels is available in the dataset.

The decline in higher education is almost entirely demographic. In 2010 universities were attended by the cohort born in the late eighties, the largest in forty years. Afterwards the student age group included those born in the nineties, which represents a drop of almost half. Age cohorts are analysed in the article "Age composition of the population of Russia".

The turnaround in 2021 is explained by the same mechanism with the opposite sign: universities began to receive those born after 2003, when birth rates started to recover.

Admissions and Graduations: dynamics since 2000

A separate Rosstat series has been kept since 2000, but it covers only state and municipal universities together with research organisations. Private universities are not included, so the figures below are lower than the total.

Thousand people.

The most interesting thing here is the third column. Graduations in 2010 were twice as high as today: 1.18 million versus 0.73 million. At the same time, admissions then and now stay around 1.1 million people per year.

The difference between admissions and graduations means that in 2010 universities graduated more people than they enrolled. That was the case: those who entered in the many previous years completed a five‑year specialist programme, while enrolments were already coming from much smaller cohorts. Today graduations are lower than admissions because some bachelors go on to master’s programmes and are counted again after a four‑year interval. Rows by source of funding are available on the admissions page.

How many students study on a paid basis

In state universities, contracts for paid services in 2024 involved 1,845.2 thousand people out of 3,902.8 thousand, i.e., 47.3%.

How this percentage changed:

• 2000: 1,468.8 thousand paid out of 4,270.8 thousand, 34.4%
• 2010: 3,229.5 thousand out of 5,848.7 thousand, 55.2%
• 2022: 1,746.5 thousand out of 3,744.6 thousand, 46.6%
• 2024: 1,845.2 thousand out of 3,902.8 thousand, 47.3%

The peak of paid education was in 2010: then more than half of state‑university students paid for their studies themselves. The number of budget places decreased in absolute terms (2,541.8 thousand in 2010 versus 1,988.5 thousand in 2024), but paid places fell much more sharply, almost by half.

That is exactly what you expect when a cohort contracts: first the ones who paid out of their own pockets leave.

Forms of study: distance learning lags behind evening

Number of university students by forms of study, thousand persons.

Classic distance learning lost 381.6 thousand persons over six years, minus 25.4%. Full-time/part-time (formerly called evening department) grew 3.1 times, from 181.5 to 564.8 thousand.

Formally this is a shift from one form to another, driven by the spread of online classes: a full-time/part-time program with webinars instead of evening classrooms grants a diploma of the same weight, and it has more control than distance learning. The full breakdown is available in the dataset.

Russia and other countries

Number of students per 1,000 inhabitants.

Russia lost 17 students per thousand residents, China added 20, India 13. The indicator for Russia is still higher than for China and India, but the gap since 2010 has narrowed threefold.

Who teaches them

Number of university and research institution academic staff:

• 2000/2001: 279.6 thousand persons
• 2010/2011: 356.8 thousand
• 2022/2023: 215.1 thousand
• 2024/2025: 217.0 thousand

The number of teachers is 39% lower than at the peak. The number of students fell by 37% over the same period, so the workload per teacher changed little.

Questions and Answers

How many students are there in Russia?

At the beginning of the 2024/2025 academic year there were 4.43 million in universities, 3.27 million in colleges under secondary‑level programmes and 0.59 million in programmes for training qualified workers. In total about 8.29 million people.

How many students per 10,000 population?

In the 2024/2025 academic year there were 303 university students per 10,000 people. In 2019/2020 it was 275.

Is the number of students in Russia growing or falling?

The number of university students grew until 2010, then fell for ten years and is growing again since 2021. The number of college students has been growing continuously since 2010.

Why do different sources give different student figures?

Because the coverage differs. One counts all higher education institutions (4.43 million in 2024/2025), another only state and municipal ones together with scientific organisations (3.90 million in 2024). The difference consists of private universities.

How many students study for free?

In state and municipal universities in 2024, funded by the federal budget, 1,988.5 thousand people studied, funded by regional budgets 58.9 thousand. That is 52.4% of the total number of students of such universities.

In Brief

Higher education in Russia peaked in 2010 and has since lost more than a third of its students, but since 2021 the numbers are rising again: 4.43 million people in the 2024/2025 academic year. Secondary professional education has been growing all this time and has almost caught up with higher education: 3.27 million college students.

Within universities two shifts are noticeable. Paid education has receded from a peak of 55% to 47%, and the part‑time form is giving way to the mixed full‑time/part‑time form, which has tripled over six years.

See also

• Wages and education level in Russia
• Age structure of Russia's population