Traditional model

Historically, civilian tertiary education was divided between a minority of traditional wide curriculum universities and a larger number of narrow specialization institutes (including art schools). Many of these institutes, such as the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, and the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, are concentrated primarily in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Institutes whose graduates are in wide demand throughout Russia, such as medical and teachers' institutes, are spread more evenly across the country. Institutes in geographically specific fields will tend to be situated in areas serving their specialties. Mining and metallurgy institutes are located in ore-rich territories, and maritime and fishing institutes are located in seaport communities.

Medical education originally developed within universities, but was separated from them in 1918 and remains separate as of 2008. Legal education in Russia exists both within universities and as standalone law institutes such as the Academic Law University (Russian: Академический правовой университет, АПУ) founded under the auspices of the Institute of State and Law. In the 1990s many technical institutes and new private schools created their own departments of law; as of 2008, law departments trained around 750 thousands students.

In the 1990s the institutes typically renamed themselves universities, while retaining their historical narrow specialisation. More recently, a number of these new private 'universities' have been renamed back to 'institutes' to reflect their narrower specialization. Thus, for instance, the Academic Law University has recently (2010) been renamed to the Academic Law Institute.

In these institutes, the student's specialisation within a chosen department was fixed upon admission, and moving between different streams within the same department was difficult. Study programmes were (and still are) rigidly fixed for the whole term of study; the students have little choice in planning their academic progress. Mobility between institutions with compatible study programmes was allowed infrequently, usually due to family relocation from town to town.

Unlike the United States or Bologna process model, Russian higher education was traditionally not divided into undergraduate (bachelors) and graduate (masters) levels. Instead, tertiary education was undertaken in a single stage, typically five or six years in duration, which resulted in a specialist degree. Specialist degrees were perceived equal to Western MSc/MA qualification. A specialist graduate needed no further academic qualification to pursue a real–world career, with the exception of some (but not all) branches of medical professions that required a post-graduate residency stage. Military college education lasted four years and was ranked as equivalent to specialist degree.

Move towards Bologna Process

Russia is in the process of migrating from its traditional tertiary education model, incompatible with existing Western academic degrees, to a modernized degree structure in line with the Bologna Process model. (Russia co-signed the Bologna Declaration in 2003.) In October 2007 Russia enacted a law that replaces the traditional five-year model of education with a two-tiered approach: a four-year bachelor (Russian: бакалавр) degree followed by a two-year master's (Russian:магистр, magistr) degree.

The move has been criticised for its merely formal approach: instead of reshaping their curriculum, universities would simply insert a BSc/BA accreditation in the middle of their standard five or six-year programmes. The job market is generally unaware of the change and critics predict that stand-alone BSc/BA diplomas will not be recognised as "real" university education in the foreseeable future, rendering the degree unnecessary and undesirable without further specialisation. Institutions like MFTI or MIFI have practiced a two-tier breakdown of their specialist programmes for decades and switched to Bologna process designations well in advance of the 2007 law, but an absolute majority of their students complete all six years of MSc/MA (formerly specialist) curriculum, regarding BSc/BA stage as useless in real life.

Student mobility among universities has been traditionally discouraged and thus kept at very low level; there are no signs that formal acceptance of the Bologna Process will help students seeking better education. Finally, while the five-year specialist training was previously free to all students, the new MSc/MA stage is not. The shift forces students to pay for what was free to the previous class; the cost is unavoidable because the BSc/BA degree alone is considered useless. Defenders of the Bologna Process argue that the final years of the specialist programme were formal and useless: academic schedules were relaxed and undemanding, allowing students to work elsewhere. Cutting the five-year specialist programme to a four-year BSc/BA will not decrease the actual academic content of most of these programmes.