Moscow's HSE offers free tuition for army contracts, Moscow Times says
Moscow's Higher School of Economics (HSE), regarded as one of Russia's most prestigious universities, has launched a programme to recruit Russians into the army, offering to fully pay for their education in exchange for signing a contract with the Russian Defence Ministry, The Moscow Times reports.
What the programme promises
Under the "Service + Education" programme the university promises to fund the studies of 100 people who agree to join the unmanned systems troops or the volunteer formation "BARS-Moscow", which performs air defence tasks for the Russian capital.
HSE assures applicants that they will have to serve "exactly one year" and will be "guaranteed" release afterwards, although a decree of Vladimir Putin provides for automatic extension of contracts during mobilisation. The university also claims that those joining the unmanned systems troops will serve in units "far from the line of contact", while BARS-Moscow volunteers are promised they will not be sent to "the zone of active combat", the outlet quotes the programme.
Contract soldiers will be able to start a bachelor's, specialist or master's programme only after returning from the army, and the university will finance it from its extra-budgetary funds.
Background
In November 2025 Russia's Defence Ministry announced the creation of unmanned systems troops. Hundreds of educational institutions were drawn into the recruitment campaign at once, including 47 leading universities whose management were ordered to enlist at least 2% of students. Military leaders expected to recruit almost 80,000 students of universities and colleges into the drone troops by the end of 2026, but the plan failed: only 8,000 recruits were attracted in the first half-year. The analytical group Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) noted that Russian students massively refuse contracts out of a justified fear of ending up in infantry assault units and serving indefinitely.
Pro-war propagandists have also acknowledged the failure. Blogger Alexander Vaskovsky complained that army contracts are signed only by "underperformers facing expulsion", and commentator Alexei Chadaev lamented that a "rather specific contingent" volunteers, "the least suited to becoming the backbone of a new high-tech branch of the armed forces".
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