Education Abroad: Cutback in Russia

Russian children go to compulsory school for eight years, between the ages of seven and 15, then go off on three different tracks. Some take fulltime jobs and give up school; a large number take jobs but study nights for three more years; and the rest—about half—have been going on to polytechnic schools for three more years to become technicians or to be part of the 12% of Russians who go to college. This is the shape of the plan for "eleven years of schooling" that was proclaimed by Nikita Khrushchev in 1958.†

Last week the Soviet Union cut the...