Is Doctoral Education Not for Everyone? How the University Reforms Led to Centralization of Doctoral Programs in the Leading Universities

The last decade brought a number of reforms to the higher education system in Russia: restructuring of the higher education system, creation of national research and federal universities, and the launch of the “5-100” excellence program. The results of these transformations system have stimulated a plethora of research in the field of higher education. However, the effects of these changes on doctoral education have been less often in researchers’ focus. In this paper, we have examined the changes and effects of the reform period on doctoral education based on the data from the Monitoring of the Universities’ Effectiveness. The analysis showed that during the last five years there has been a redistribution of the doctoral students towards the leading universities. Moreover, there are magnet universities in the federal districts which attract a significant part of the doctoral students. Regions with no leading universities face the most difficult situation: the dynamic of the studied indicators in these regions is either negative or significantly lags behind other regions.