The key facts

  • Average certificate grade of college applicants is 4; in some specialties 4.9
  • Number of college applicants has grown from 900,000 to 1.4 million
  • In 2026, 63% of ninth-graders and 12% of eleventh-graders enrolled in colleges

The profile of college applicants has changed

School graduates with an average certificate grade of Gazeta.Ru. According to him, in certain specialties the average grade reaches 4.9 — for example, in the fields of

Number of applicants and structure of fields

Kravtsov also cited data on growing interest in secondary vocational education: the number of people applying to colleges has grown from 900,000 to 1.4 million. In 2026, 63% of ninth-graders and 12% of eleventh-graders enrolled in colleges. More than half of the fields at colleges, according to the minister, are engineering and technical specialties.

Context: proposal to teach AI

Earlier, in October, State Duma deputy Dmitry Shatunov proposed teaching schoolchildren and students the basics of artificial intelligence. He emphasized that in the secondary vocational education system it would be advisable to combine general AI training with practice-oriented modules that take into account the specifics of the profession or specialty being studied. This proposal remains an initiative: the publication does not report on its adoption.