Tuition payments are provided either from individual resources or by sponsoring prospective employers. After a 1993 drop in enrollments in the public sector, admissions to state higher education institutions rose by one-fifth in five years. Close to three-fifths of this growth was accounted for by the increase in admissions with tuition charges in state higher education institutions. Over this period not only the absolute numbers but also the rates of increase in admissions with tuition were higher in state institutions than in nonstate ones. Instruction on a fee-paying basis is geared to the market value of a program and the prestige of the institution rather than to the actually incurred costs.
Some prestigious institutions require an up-front fee for the first three years of instruction.
Others have developed more flexible schemes, offering students several options of tuition payment. Yet another smaller group of institutions has introduced prepaid tuition schemes, in which payment is collected over a short period of several months before admission. Affordability of higher education programs is primarily a function of individual incomes and savings, which are difficult to estimate in today s Russia. At the same time, experts estimate underreporting of incomes by 40 percent in the nonstate sector, mainly in reaction to the pressure of abusively high tax rates. The total recorded savings rates are low, and the amount of cash kept outside banks can only be estimated.