Accessibility of Professional Education in Russia

In this paper, on the basis of data of RLMS and of Monitoring of economics of education, it is shown that factors of the family capital (first of all, incomes and the educational level of parents) represent an essential obstacle for educational options for Russian high schools graduates. The inequity in accessing professional education was strong in 1961-1990 as well as in 1991-2000. Some of the factors disappeared (parents' membership in the Communist Party, respondent's age), some became less influential (village as the birthplace). However, the importance of some parameters such as parents' human capital, increased. The existing social inequality of pupils' families becomes fixed and aggravated at high school level as children of poorer and less educated parents study at the worst schools and have lower progress. Therefore, the considerable inequality of educational intentions between pupils of 8- 9 classes exists: children from families with higher social positions are going to receive full secondary education and will most likely be enrolled to the university courses while children from families with low level of the family capital are going to have only primary or secondary professional education. Subsequently, this self-restriction of intentions results in the social differentiation of students in three levels of professional education (primary, secondary and higher): university's students once studied at better schools and their parents have higher social positions.