The Dynamics and the Efficiency of Pre-Entry Coaching and Recommendations for Smoothing Educational Inequality among University Applicants

Recently, the issue of inequality in access to higher education has become increasingly salient. Attaining higher education is a coveted asset, which carries both societal and individual benefits, with implications both material and immaterial. Consequently, prospective students find themselves in a competitive struggle for the opportunity of tuition-free enrollment in higher education programs. However, the achievement of desired outcomes is not solely dependent on the intellectual capacities of the learners; there exists a confluence of factors that indirectly influence the accessibility of higher education. These factors, termed sources of inequality, encompass individual, familial, and scholastic dimensions. Their impact on the effectiveness of prospective students during university admission is articulated through mechanisms of inequality, one of which involves pre-entry coaching. Given external shocks such as COVID-19 and the global trend towards digitalization of education, it is crucial to assess the prevalence dynamics of pre-entry coaching, as its structure has undergone fundamental changes. Consequently, hypotheses have been formulated based on the analysis of theoretical and empirical research, suggesting that online preparation strategies have become more popular due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with their efficacy also increasing by the end of the period under consideration. Descriptive, comparative, and econometric methods are employed to test these hypotheses. The dataset, compiled in 2022, is provided by the Education Economy Monitoring and contains information about applicants enrolled in universities from 2018 to 2021. The research findings indicate that the prevalence of online classes, both paid and free, has been increasing steadily throughout the period under review, with a particularly sharp rise in the popularity of paid online classes during the COVID-19 period (by 68% from 2019 to 2020). It is noteworthy that since 2021, the prevalence of paid offline classes has decreased, and free offline preparation has become the least popular method of supplementary preparation for standardized tests. Furthermore, regression models constructed across different years have demonstrated the positive contribution of online classes to standardized test scores in both Russian language and specialized mathematics, as well as to the average standardized test score required for university admission. Specifically, recommendations are proposed within the framework of this study to mitigate educational inequality among students, including state support for online platforms aggregating online courses, universal implementation of specialized classes, and allocation of free certificates for attending online courses for academically disadvantaged students. The conclusion highlights the scholarly significance of this work and outlines potential avenues for future research.