TPU expects more than 1,000 students arrive due to the borders opening

TOMSK, Mar 22 – RIA Tomsk. Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) is expecting more than 1 thousand students to return to intramural education due to the relaxation of the entry regime; this stream will be mainly from Kazakhstan, a representative of the university's press service told RIA Tomsk on Monday.

Earlier, Izvestia reported that Rospotrebnadzor weekly updates recommendations for universities, according to which foreign students are allowed to return to the Russian Federation to continue their studies if they have a negative PCR test for COVID-19. According to federal media, there are 25 countries open for entry into Russia in the list, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Vietnam, Greece, Egypt, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Finland, Switzerland, South Korea, South Ossetia and Japan.

As the press service of TPU specifies, more than 2.5 thousand foreign students are currently studying at the university. More than 800 of them are now in Tomsk. These are students who did not leave the region during the pandemic or returned to study from countries with a favorable epidemiological situation, with which Russia's borders had already been opened earlier.

"It is expected that the main stream of students wishing to return to intramural study at Tomsk Polytechnic will be from Kazakhstan. It is just over 1 thousand internal students," the agency's interlocutor said.

According to the university, the procedure of returning to study and settling in dormitories for foreign students is currently under development, it will be agreed with the operational headquarters of the Tomsk region and Rospotrebnadzor.