Just under half of Russia's universities offer IT degrees, and since 2016, more than 70 universities have launched IT programs. Enrolled in state-funded slots are 55% of students, with the number of state-funded slots increasing by 68% from 2016 to 2022, which indicates that the IT industry is a high priority for the government. This is the conclusion reached by analysts of the Yakov and Partners consultancy in their study based on the monitoring of graduate employment; the study was prepared for the Digitalization of Industrial Russia conference held in Nizhny Novgorod.
The study points out that only 50% of students successfully complete a bachelor's degree within 4 years, and this share is even lower for fee-paying students. Nevertheless, 40% of those who fail to graduate on time still find a job quickly, which may be due to the fact that IT professionals are in high demand in the market. IT graduates enjoy higher-than-average employment rates, which remain high for at least 5 years after graduation. Thirty-eight percent of IT graduates are already employed at the time of graduation.
IT graduates successfully completing their studies are among the top earners, behind only professionals in aeronautics and space, and math. Moreover, the income of IT graduates is also growing faster than the income of the average graduate: the income gap with the average graduate doubled between 2019 and 2022, reaching 86%. In other words, an IT graduate earns almost twice as much as the average graduate
Elena Kuznetsova, Director of the Yakov and Partners Institute and co-author of the study
It is good to see that IT graduates' are predominantly employed in their fields of specialization and that over time this proportion only increases up to 40%. In the first year after graduation, IT graduates are already in the top 6 high-paying occupations in the job market, and in the fourth year after graduation they move up to third place. More than half of them work in large companies. All this shows that business understands the importance of this field for the industry
Olga Piven, director and co-founder of the Digitalization of Industrial Russia conference
According to the authors of the study, however, the competition among industries for the best graduates is unequal. Forty to fifty percent of graduates are employed in banking, IT and communications, mineral extraction and science – the industries that offer the highest incomes to IT graduates. In terms of IT graduates' income, public administration, healthcare and other sectors are three times or more behind the digitalization leaders.
The share of women enrolled in bachelor's and specialist's IT programs ranges from 20% (Software Engineering) to 38% (Mathematics and Computer Science) and has been declining since 2021, reaching an average of 27%. This trend may be partly due to a significant income gap between men and women, which can be as high as 26% for bachelor's degree graduates and 34% for master's degree graduates. Women at graduation from a master's program have income comparable to that of men one year after graduation from a bachelor's program.
According to experts, the most efficient universities are MIPT, Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics, Peter the Great Polytechnic, and Bauman State Technical University.
