All Work and No Study.

[Rezia]

All work and no study. (The Moscow News, January 2011)
     Students threaten protest over talk of scrapping the stipend for undergraduates.
     Students have spoken out at a proposal to scrap the standard stipend and force them to work, saying it could affect their studies and spark protests.
     President Dmitry Medvedev's top economic advisor Arkady Dvorkovich said in an interview with //gazeta.ru that subsidizing students sent out the wrong signal, and that jobs should be created to fund their education.
     "Everybody needs to have their own work, and those jobs should become modern," he said. "For it to become fashionable [to work] it is necessary to cancel standard grants for students because it sends the wrong signal if you receive indemnifications for studying."
     The current stipend doesn't cover students' fees, meaning many Russian students already have to work. Dvorkovich, however, proposes creating more jobs on campus to make it easier to focus on studies.
     "After studying they can work on the faculty, in the library, in cafes or doing translations," he added.
      The Russian Union of Students has planned a picket on January 26 outside the Education and Science Ministry, and warns of further demonstrations, RIA Novosti reports.
      "The realization of this current initiative could promote displays of radicalism in the youth movement," said the union's chairman Alexei Kazak.
      But Lyubov Dukhamna, the vice-president of the Russian Public Chamber of Science, says the grant is so small, covering less than 10 per cent of students' expenditures, that nobody will notice it. Vedomosti reports.
     Russia's government is currently battling a budget deficit, and cutting subsidies for students could help save money.
     The grant is only available to students studying at free universities, and opponents of the system say their tax shouldn't be used to support a minority, when most have to pay for their education.
     "In Russian universities stipends are only given to students who study for free, which is a small percentage," said Natalia Bashkireva, who recently graduated from a fee-paying school. "As a tax payer I don't see any use for me paying for students studying for free and getting subsidies as well, when I paid for my education."
       But students say free education is their basic right, particularly to encourage talented pupils from poorer backgrounds to take university courses and increase social mobility.
      "They suggest stratifying society even more by making education more elite," Kazak wrote on the union's website. "Talented young people from poor families won't be able to study and one of the core incentives to get good marks in exams will disappear."
     Kazak, however, believes the recent ethnic tensions could lead to the plans being shelved for fear of sparking more protests.
     "Students and other young people are already one of the most intolerant social groups," he wrote on the union's website. "I'm sure these ideas will be buried otherwise it will be very easy to collect a big group of protesters in the street."