The era of the USE and reforms in education (the view of a sociologist)

The introduction of the Unified State Examination (USE), which was declared in order to reduce social and territorial inequality in access to higher education (HE), made it possible to ensure uniform requirements and standards for HE for the transition to the Bologna system and went in line with the institutional transformations of secondary and higher education (strengthening the hierarchy and selectivity). The joint result was an increase in social inequality and territorial and settlement restrictions on access to HE, which differs in the quality and future economic benefits in the labor market. There was a social consolidation of two educational tracks of youth: giving access through the USE to full-time HE education (mainly for people from middle and higher strata) and opening the way - through the transit of SVE - to distance learning (much more common for young people with reduced economic and sociocultural resources). The socioeconomic conditionality of access to different quality of HE is enhanced by interregional and settlement differences, and universal competition based on the USE removes the most prepared young people from the regions. Motivation and opportunities to obtain HE (valued by the labor market) among young people from low-resource groups are declining, and their push into the SVE sector is intensifying. When the HE system operates on a market basis, and private investment plays an increasing role in the accumulation of educational achievements of students and school graduates, a bias in the choice of HE specialties is inevitable: the predominance of the social-humanitarian, legal profile and the lack of technical and scientific-natural specialties. Therefore, the currently central demand of society for the education of engineering personnel is difficult to implement with the actual measures of state policy.