Enhancing Access to Higher Education through University-Government Cooperation (the Case of Russian Far Eastern Regions)

This article discusses issues associated with the facilitation of higher education accessibility by intensifying university-government cooperation. Existing approaches to measuring the accessibility of the higher education system as a whole and its specific components were analysed. Various aspects of the problem were investigated using the example of higher education institutions in the Russian Far East. The analysis was based on data retrieved from the Russian Federal Statistics Service and the Unified Information System of the Ministry of Education and Science. It is shown that residents in the Russian Far East receive substantial opportunities for accessing higher education as compared to the residents in other Russian federal districts. Nevertheless, the extremely low geographical accessibility of higher education in this part of Russia has a detrimental effect on overall access to higher education. On the basis of the obtained results, a number of recommendations were developed for facilitating cooperation between universities and governmental authorities in order to increase overall accessibility to higher education in this region. It is proposed to compensate for the negative impact of the geographical factor by maximizing the positive effects of other factors, for instance, by increasing the affordability of university education. Thus, students from locations with absent or very few higher education institutions may be reimbursed for their travel expenses, or reimbursement may be offered to those students who are not provided with dormitory accommodation. Universities may keep their tuition fees at the lowest rate as established by the RF legislation.