“Intellectual Belarus” is the official education development program for 2026–2030. It was approved at the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly in December 2025 as the No. 2 priority of the country’s socio-economic development.
However, the picture looks different when it comes to funding:
- The program promises to allocate almost 6.4 billion Belarusian rubles over five years. That is roughly the same amount received by the security sector in one year alone (the second-to-last priority) – 6.7 billion per year.
- If converted into euros, the five-year budget amounts to €1.87 billion. By comparison, the University of Göttingen in Germany has an annual budget of €1.4 billion.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Advisor on Education and Science, Pavel Tereshkovich, comments on the plan:
“The program promises to provide quality education to everyone. At the same time, it states that only 40% of university teachers in Belarus currently hold academic degrees. Worldwide, having an academic degree is a basic requirement for a university lecturer. In Belarus today, the majority of university teachers do not meet this requirement.
This explains the persistent trend of Belarusian universities dropping out of international rankings. In 2024, 10 Belarusian universities were among the top 5,000 in the Webometrics ranking. By 2026, only five remained.
Despite its grand title, “Intellectual Belarus”, the program envisages that at least 50% of students, after completing the 9th grade, will be directed toward vocational and technical education, primarily to obtain working-class professions.
For comparison, in OECD countries, the share of young people receiving such education is just over 30%, while in Belgium and the Czech Republic – countries with large industrial sectors – it is around 25%.
The program also promises to “increase the prestige of the teaching profession” but provides no specific measures to achieve this.
Another figure from the report section: 296 students were sent by the state to study abroad. This is just over 1% of all Belarusians currently studying abroad”.
