Credential Templates, The Former USSR and the Russian Federation

The university level higher education curriculum stipulates 36 weeks of study a year.
Depending on the field of study (specialisation), mandatory courses in the curriculum constitute
80 to 85 percent, optional courses 15 to 20 percent. The total workload of a student should not
exceed 54 hours a week, including classroom work and independent studies. For part-time
evening education, classwork should be no less than 10 hours a week. In the case of
correspondence education, students are offered at least 160 contact hours a year.
It is important to note that the system of higher education in the Russian Federation, as in
the former USSR, emphasizes contact hours at the expense of homework and independent study.
Therefore a direct conversion of instructional hours in the Russian Federation to semester hours
(credits) in Western countries may be misleading.
One of the current initiatives of the Russian Ministry of Education in conjunction with
the Bologna process is the introduction of credits. The European Credit Transfer System (ECTS)
uses a standard system of 30 hours corresponding to one ECTS credit. It is envisioned that one
academic year will comprise of approximately 60 credits.
Language of Instruction
The principal language of higher education in the Russian Federation is Russian. Higher
education may be conducted in other languages of the Russian Federation, as well as foreign
languages. The language of education is set by the appropriate administrative body.
Curriculum Standards
As in the former USSR, higher education programs in the Russian Federation are divided
into study areas (направления, napravleniya), which are further subdivided into specialisations
(специальности, spetsial’nosti). Similarly, all programs continue to be identified by a number
and a name. Specialisations within the same study area may carry the same identification number
but different names. The total number of specialisations has increased as traditional
specialisations exist in parallel with new specialisations. New specialisations were added in study
areas such as business/management, law, sociology, computer science/informatics, languages,
environmental science, etc.
Foundation studies, in the 1 st and 2 nd year of study, now integrate compulsory teaching in
humanities and social sciences for natural science programs, and vice versa. Also in a shift from
the Soviet system, some subjects, such as the history of the Communist Party of the USSR,
scientific communism, and political economy, which were previously part of foundation studies
within all specialisations, have been renamed, revised or eliminated. Despite a broader general
character of studies in the first two years of study, many Bachelor and "Specialist" programs
continue to represent a high degree of professional specialisation.
The division of the course content into foundation studies, basic professional courses and
specialised courses are similar to that in the Soviet system of education. However, now
institutions of higher education have some autonomy with regard to determining the course
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