Education Abroad: Cutback in Russia

Russian children go to compulsory school for eight years, between the ages of seven and 15, then go off on three different tracks. Some take fulltime jobs and give up school; a large number take jobs but study nights for three more years; and the rest—about half—have been going on to polytechnic schools for three more years to become technicians or to be part of the 12% of Russians who go to college. This is the shape of the plan for "eleven years of schooling" that was proclaimed by Nikita Khrushchev in 1958.†

Last week the Soviet Union cut the eleven back to ten by lopping off the last year of polytechnic training. Almost everyone affected had complained about the eleven-year system. Educators raised a cry over falling academic standards, argued that it deprived nonvocational students of time to prepare for college.

Factory managers complained of the low quality of stepped-up training, which in practice left many students merely gawking at the machines that they supposedly were learning to operate. Most important of all, manpower experts pointed out that Russia's acute labor shortage could not afford prolonged schooling for all of the nation's high school students.