Which metrics are you even using? It's not universities for sure.
50% of Russia is under propaganda and can't even talk English. The ones that can speak English and have engineering degrees, a large part of them are currently fleeing Russia. The other halve doesn't even know what is going to hit them ( jobs, economy, ... ).
Favorite destination seems to be Europe, Canada, US, ... According to what I see in preferences of resumees. And I'm seeing a lot of resumees coming in.
Turkeye and Georgia is pretty popular too, but I'd think it's easier to get there too ( flights), could be wrong about this though.
Edit: removed links to 3 GitHub resumees of Russian engineers uploaded within the last 2 hours ( in English). From engineers that worked at zg. Google/Yandex and want to get out of the country.
I’m talking about huge IQ drops. About the language skills in all the western world. Just listen to cnn, fox news, to the charts’ lyrics and so forth. It’s staggering.
Also, speaking English is in no way a prerequisite for a good education.
Fyi. I speak dutch, french, English.
I'm able to communicate in German and I understand Spanish a bit (pero no habla ).
Most people here speak at 2-3 languages by default.
So I would say it counts as education level :)
And while we are discussing the sex of the angels as byzantines, to an incredible toxic degree, even in our top universities, we might lose some clout.
Also: I know some elders who read Cicero in Latin but do not speak English.
Classical teachings matter.
And the politicians in the west are in the hands of the richest.
I’m not saying Russia is better. Only that the west is dumber and dumber. Less and less educated.
We should not be arrogant.