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The paper deals with comparative analys is of international university rankings methodology and a complex of measures for Russian higher education development suggested by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. It is revealed that the “roadmap” for higher education development does not allow predicting improvement of national university ranking in international surveys. Some important directions for Russian university recognition by international educational society are suggested in the paper.

Changes in the Russian system of higher education presented new challenges to universities in terms of their achievements and to professional scholars as well. Scholars forced to become muchmore active both in teaching and research. They have to publish more articles and research papers in prestigious foreign journals in English. They are induced to improve their skills or give way to those who are younger, have experience in leading educational and research institutions, or greater in academic achievement.The paper analyzes the strategic documents of the leading Russian universities, annual reports on the implementation of development programs.Russian scholars mostly write in Russian, read and cite articles of Russian-language authors. There were 89.9 articles per 100 persons in journals indexed in the database of the Russian Science Citation Index, 4.1 articles per 100 persons in the Web of Science, 5.3 articles per 100 persons in Scopus in 2013. The leading universities are intended to increase by 5 the number of articles in the foreign bases by 2020.On the one hand organizational culture and the principles of academic management may offer opportunities for development, gaining new competences, participating in contests and research. On the other hand the current situation can impose restrictions and provoke a teacher on the informal practices.

The paper highlights the implementation of programme on National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University competitiveness enhancement in the group of top level world research and academic institutions and the promotion to TOP-100 of the world academic rankings. The strategic goal is TPU development as research university - one of the leaders in resource-efficient technologies, solving global problems of humanity on the way to sustainable development. Meeting a goal is planned through focusing the efforts on four basic development vectors: “Education”, “Research”, “Human Resources” and “Management”. The paper reveals the TPU undertakings for achievement of the assigned goals.

The paper deals with the specific features of higher education quality assurance in France based on the development of partnership between government, universities and independent agencies. The information about the two independent agencies providing assessment ofeducation quality – AERES and CTI is presented. The results of comparative analysis of Russian and French quality assurance systems in education are discussed with the aim to study the possibility of foreign experience transformation into the practice of Russian universities.

“Applied” bachelor degree programs have to provide for the graduates practical training specificfor vocational education and theoretical education specific for the programs of higher education on the level of the “academic” bachelor degree programs. The paper is focused on the potential trends and conditions of such programs implementation. The specific features of the structure and content of the educational programs are defined on the basis of the comparative analysis of requirements for learning outcomes (competences) of the graduates of “academic” bachelor degree programs, vocational education programs and “applied” bachelor degree programs.

The author presents her own opinion on the university lecturer activities. The paper emphasizes the integrative character of university lecturer activities, which includes, besides teaching, research work, scientific guidance and consulting, membership in different councils and editorial boards, peer reviewing, and writing of articles, monographs, textbooks, and courses. Some kinds of his activities are unobvious and imperceptible. The author uses the metaphor “invisible laboratory of mental work” and expresses concern in connection with the uncertain position of a university teacher in the modernization processes in higher education and with possible loss of the value of a unique personality.

The paper analyzes indicators that are used in higher education institutions and autonomous campuses monitoring, and reveals the corresponding problems, which arise from implementing these indicators to autonomous campuses in Russian small cities. The authors arrive at the conclusion that without higher education institutions Russian small cities do not have development perspectives. In medium-term perspective it signifies an extreme polarization of economic space of Russian Federation.

The article describes some approaches to the organization of training of professionals for high-tech industries at the UNN Faculty of Physics using the resources of the Physical-Technical Research Institute of UNN. The paper presents a number of successful results of this activity. It is shown that the combination of fundamental training carried out at the classical Faculty of Physics and practical training at the Research Institute focused on the application of research results in the industry ensures a new level of quality for the competences of the University graduates.

The paper shows the gender structure of higher education teaching staff in the post-Soviet Russia, and draws the results of comparison with foreign countries. The data is based on Russian and international educational statistics. The objective of this work is to reveal the type of dynamics of the gender structure of higher education teaching staff at the turn of the XXI century. It also demonstrates peculiarities of Russian higher education teaching staff feminization through a number of methods, including analysis, comparison, and quantitative evaluations (percentage, indices, and statistical series etc.) as well as by application of such parameters as proportion of women, and gender parity index. The gender aspect of the official structure of Russian higher education teaching staff is viewed as the gender composition of the teaching staff according to the level of the official structure as well as men/ women distribution by these levels. Summary: with higher education teaching staff gradually feminizing worldwide, this trend gains still greater speed in Russia. Moreover, the higher the official level is, the higher the feminization goes.

The theory of epistemological diversity is one of the modern trends in epistemology. Basing on this theory, the author gives a description of a special kind of knowledge - subject-practical knowledge. On author"s opinion the education system works both with scientific and subject-practical knowledge and it leads to a strategic contradiction because treatment of two different types of knowledge cannot be effectively implemented in standardized forms. The paper discusses the changes in the educational strategy required by a situation of coexistence of the two types of knowledge in higher education.