The topic of education, which is accorded lofty significance from time to time, has become topical and relevant again. Education is the focus of one of the national projects and a topic of discussion at this year's first meeting of the State Council, and Russia has finally proposed that it be placed at the top of the agenda for the upcoming G8 summit. With the exception of the G8 summit, where the focus will be on the integrative aspects of education in the global context, in all other cases the focus will be on problems of modernizing Russian education. According to news reports, President V.V. Putin was forced to acknowledge in his address to the State Council that there is no radical modernization of this sector. Thus there is a need to address "the necessity of fundamentally new criteria for rating the quality of education, new managerial technologies, and financial mechanisms." The criteria for rating quality in higher education will be formulated "based on criteria demanded by the public, the economy, employers, and the labor market." Here, the authors answer concerns concerning to what extent the criteria used to rate higher education are adequate for the role that has been assigned to them. (Contains 2 tables and 1 note.)