Russia opens its doors to students from countries of the Islamic world
In 2023, more than 355 thousand students arrived in Russia to study, and this figure is expected to rise to 425 thousand by the end of 2024. Students from countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) can take a particularly active part in the education.
As part of Russia's chairmanship of BRICS, the idea arose to create an alternative system for ranking higher educational institutions. This approach will make it possible to more fairly and accurately evaluate universities in different countries based on scientific criteria and taking into account the characteristics of national educational systems. Interest in this initiative has already been shown in Iran, where issues of inter-university and scientific cooperation were discussed.
Particular attention is also paid to the development of an intergovernmental agreement on the recognition of education, qualifications and degrees, including medical specialties. These agreements have already been signed with 24 OIC member countries, and new projects are at various stages of approval. Russia is also increasing the number of quotas for free education for students from OIC countries. For example, by the end of 2022, more than 262,000 citizens of OIC member countries studied at Russian universities, more than 84,000 of them at the expense of the Russian budget.
The most popular specialties for students from OIS are medical sciences, economics, software engineering, management, information science and computer science, as well as international relations.
Last year, at the “Russia - Islamic World: KazanForum” forum, new cooperation mechanisms were proposed, including holding multilateral competitions for joint scientific projects. It is expected that this year’s forum will attract even more new initiatives and projects, and will also become a platform for discussing the results of joint work between Russia and the OIC countries in the field of science and education.
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