Standardized Procedures of Applying for Admission to Higher Education Institutes as a Component of Accessibility of the Higher Education: Russian and Foreign Experience

Unified State Examination (USE) is a major project in Russian education. On the one part it affects the interests of millions of schoolchildren, entrants and their parents and on the other part it is an important component of continuity between school and higher education. Advancement of accessibility of the higher education is named as the main achievement of this assessment procedure as long as every school graduate, even from remote and hard-to-reach areas of Russia, can enter the best higher education institutions of the country without leaving his place of residence. The study is intended to comprehensively analyze organizing and holding of the USE as a form of the state final attestation in secondary school and of the entering examination in the higher education institutions. The research notifies achievements of the USE modernization, the experience of increasing objectivity and transparency of the examination procedure, sets out the opposing arguments of this form of assessment. A number of conclusions were made by the authors based on analysis of the USE scores and monitoring of the pathways chosen by school graduates from one of the Russian regions, the Chuvash Republic. Recommendations are made on the further improvement of legal regulation of the entering to higher education institutes with a view to extension of accessibility.