RUSSIAN COLLEGES TO TEACH 4,000 FOREIGN STUDENTS GRATIS








MOSCOW, March 13 /from RIA Novosti's Galina Baryshnikova/ - Russian higher educational establishments will this year receive about four thousand foreign students at the federal budget's expense, this RIA Novosti correspondent was told at the Russian Ministry of Education.


	About forty percent of the students will study engineering while the rest will attend courses in medicine and the humanities. Over 400 citizens of the CIS and the three Baltic states that used to be part of the Soviet Union will participate in this Russian government programme, plus 3,470 students from outside the CIS.


	CIS member states keep asking Russia's Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Education to increase admission of their students to Russian colleges and to grant them scholarships. Since as a rule, CIS higher educational establishments do not provide education in areas needed for the development of their national industries.


	About 60,000 foreign students are taught in Russia every year, with 90 percent of them on a contractual basis.