Search

The Western-style internationalisation of Russian universities, which guided the evolution of the country's higher education sector for over three decades, has been challenged by Western sanctions following the 2022 Russian 'Special military operation in Ukraine'. The authors show through the prism of constructivist theory how the norm on the internationalisation of higher education characterised by the strive for Westernised world-class universities was adopted and then came to unravel in Russia. A qualitative case study based on 42 expert interviews and an analysis of political discourse and legal documents reveals how the key features of the internationalisation of Russian universities are being challenged. The authors contribute to the expert literature the notion of 'norm reversal', defined as the process whereby an institutionalised and internalised international norm is 'cancelled' in a specific country. The paper shows that the reversal in Russian higher education, which was initially 'circumstantial' is becoming 'intentional', with legal documents being drawn up to accelerate and claim ownership of it.

This paper explores integrity dilemmas experienced by Russian academics in the context of building a world-class university. Interviews with professors and managers of major research universities in Moscow provide critical insights into the organisational and attitudinal incongruities generated by a coercive state--a challenge that Russia has been unable to rise above following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Scepticism as to the "master model" of competitive performance is evident in relation to the Russian 5-100-2020 excellence scheme, the overseers of which prioritise "reputation management" over integrity in governance and performance. In addition to exposing the consequences of deficient institutional autonomy, which prevail in the context of a post-totalitarian society, this paper calls for enhanced critical inquiry into university excellence programmes imposed by performativist and vanity-driven governments.

This paper examines the origination and development of the school education system in Vologda Governorate in the period 1725-1917. This part of the set covers the period 1900-1917. The authors drew upon a set of works covering pre-revolutionary pedagogy, as well as a pool of contemporary Russian scholarly literature. In conducting the research reported in this paper, the authors employed both general methods of research, including concretization and summarization, and traditional methods of historical analysis. Use was made of the historical-situational method to explore particular historical facts in the context of the era under study in conjunction with various neighboring events and facts. The authors conclude by noting that from 1900 to 1916 Vologda Governorate enjoyed a period of dynamic development in its public education sector, which had been facilitated by the nationwide process of preparation for the institution of compulsory education. The number of educational institutions in the region had reached as many as 2,000, with significant gains achieved in the quality of the education system as well. In addition to the focus on setting up new educational institutions, considerable attention was devoted to building new schools, ensuring better pay and working conditions for teachers, and preparing the region's teaching workforce. Despite the complex geographical conditions, namely the region's large relatively lowly populated land mass, the Ministry of Public Education had sought to institute compulsory primary education throughout Vologda Governorate by 1920. To do it justice, these plans were being systematically put into effect. As early as 1914, nearly 75 % of the region's school-age children attended school. The bulk of the region's out-of-school children were accounted for by peasant girls whose parents viewed education as being of little use to a female in the countryside. [For Part 3, see EJ1238518.]

The purpose of this work is to develop models of resilient schools, both positive and negative. This study is based on the methodological principles of interdisciplinarity and consistency. The process of identifying models of resilient schools took place in two stages: 1) searching databases for examples confirming the existence of "successful" schools in difficult socio-economic conditions, and 2) analysis of interviews and survey results of teachers, students, and parents. Results show that the proposed classification of models of resilient schools was clarified. The remaining uncertainty regarding the issue of the existence of resilient schools is resolved through the inclusion into the sphere of pedagogical analysis of non-social objects such as actors of educational interaction. It is shown that adverse social conditions (from the standpoint of the school and universal values) in reality seem to be the most likely life futurity for children from dysfunctional families. Changing this futurity to a more positive one requires a specific education in a resilient school, which differs from other schools in its educational strategy. The paper defines the school strategies determining qualitatively different models of resilient educational organizations. Five such models are proposed, based on the principles of resonant interaction oriented to supporting positive and blocking negative educational fluctuations of schoolchildren, compensatory interactions, calling for the creation in the school of specific conditions neutralizing the effects of the adverse environment, development of personal resilience of pupils as a meta-competency, and integration of all previous models into a single educational system. The integrative model can be considered as the highest level of school resilience, achieved by the gradual development of the previous models.

So-called 'world-class universities' emerged on the global higher education scene following the Second World War. Their development in countries around the world, particularly since the early 2000s, has evolved into an international norm, although not without debate and contestation. This paper applies Constructivist theory to reflect on how local contestation affected the implementation of this norm of world-class universities in Russia, at a time when the internationalization of higher education was a national priority (i.e. before the beginning of hostilities in Ukraine). The authors employ process tracing to follow the norm from its emergence on the international stage to its contemporary adoption by Russia with Project 5-100, drawing on a case study based on 22 targeted expert interviews to identify the types and roots of resistance in Russian universities. The findings indicate that Russian contestation reflects in most cases difficulties adapting to new requirements and the fear of being left behind rather than an overall rejection of the international norm of world-class universities. The study reveals that international actors are essential not only to norm diffusion on the international stage, but also during domestic norm implementation as they are instrumental in overcoming contestation.

The paper deals with the evaluation of specialists' professional training quality within the framework of intersectoral, transborder, public and private models of social partnership described in theories by foreign and Russian scientists. Special attention is paid to providing methodological grounds for cooperation between the total subjects within the vocational education system. The procedure of studying the Russian employers' ideas about the high-quality training for specialists relies on an innovation spiritual and ontological model of social partnership. The model comprises the following components: representation of the educational content through the lens of business futurology on the part of teachers; selection of the educational content through the lens of spiritual and ontological intentions on the part of students; expert evaluation of the educational through the lens of the competitive business environment on the part of the employers. The effectiveness of social partnership is determined proceeding from justified indices: the extent of variability, flexibility and mobility when performing the tasks of teaching the students possessing social and creative assets that are in demand at the labor market in the sphere of children and youth leisure. The paper presents the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data of questionnaire survey conducted among the directors of educational organizations of culture (a case study of Rostov region of the Russian Federation). The survey has allowed detecting a slight positive dynamics in their evaluations of the quality of specialists' training and outlining the prospects in the development of social partnership between the employers and the educational organizations.

The article aims to examine theoretical and practical relationships between academic excellence and competitiveness in university education. The survey was conducted among university employees. Evaluation of each factor was carried out using the five-point Likert scale. The highest and statistically significant assessment was received for the following factors: the growth of graduates' salaries (4.08, 3.89, 4.16), the number of foreign students (4.01, 4.44, 4.56), the amount of extra-budgetary income of universities from various types of activities (4.12, 4.27, 4.56), and the number of publications in indexed databases (3.69, 4.63, 3.81). Several factors with the closest assessments among all the respondents were identified. Besides, very low estimates of the quality of state participation in maintaining competitiveness and academic excellence in universities were revealed. The paper unveiled how the general theoretical correlation of competitiveness and academic excellence is realized in the practice of educational systems' public administration. Furthermore, the study disclosed the indicators used to assess universities' activities in the context of competitiveness and academic excellence. The author believes that the use of competitiveness category in describing the purpose of the academic excellence program is justified. The study identified several significant factors in improving academic performance and competitiveness that affect the position of universities in Russia and developing countries in international rankings. The example of the Russian Academic Excellence Project demonstrated that the provision by the authorities of an artificial competitive advantage to specific universities negatively affects the level of competitiveness of other Russian universities.

This work examines the private education sector in the Caucasus in the prerevolutionary period. Consideration is given to the distinctive characteristics of the development of secondary, lower, and primary private education in the region. The key sources used in putting this work together are the annual Reports on Educational Institutions in the Caucasus Educational District, which provide data on the region's schools run by the Ministry of Public Education in the period 1884-1914, and the 1879 Memorandum Book for the Caucasus Educational District. Given the study's nature, special use was made of the statistical method, with the diverse statistical material classified by level of private educational institutions and the raw data on both the number of educational institutions and the gender and religious composition of the student body summarized. This helped identify some of the key distinctive characteristics of the development of the private education system in the Caucasus in the period 1849-1914. The authors' conclusions are as follows: (1) private educational institutions in the Caucasus were divided into the following three categories: category 1 -- educational institutions with five grades and up (gymnasia and higher primary educational institutions); category 2 -- educational institutions with three-to-four grades (urban schools and four-grade progymnasia); category 3 -- educational institutions with one-to-two grades (primary schools); (2) to be able to compete with ministerial (public) educational institutions, private educational institutions had to continuously keep track of the demand for education in society, take account of new trends, and vouch for the quality of the educational process. Consequently, the region's private education sector was characterized by impermanence. Essentially, it acted as a litmus paper for a reading on what was desired by society in the Caucasus. The sector was undergoing continuous change, with the number of school grades increasing. The number of primary private educational institutions continuously declined in the region over the prerevolutionary period. In 1879, primary schools accounted for 93 % of all private educational institutions in the region, in 1907 -- for 78 %, and in 1914 -- for just 61 %; and (3) in religious composition, the student body across the region's private educational institutions was dominated throughout the period under review by Orthodox Christians (the figure ranging from 57 to 74 %), followed by Armenian Gregorian Christians (18 to 35 %), with members of other faiths accounting for an insignificant portion of the region's student body.

The aim of the study is to substantiate methodological approaches to the agricultural educational program development on the basis of a modular-competence-based approach, which provides training for the experts of the agricultural industry, capable of implementing a federal scientific and technical program in the future for the development of agriculture in Russia, taking into account the requirements of professional standards. Professional and public accreditation of agricultural educational programs will allow for an external examination of the educational program implementation level and quality in accordance with approved professional standards and develop recommendations aimed at student training level improvement. The study defines the role of professional and public accreditation provision in the interaction between the labor market and the vocational education system. The authors substantiated the modular-competence-based approach to the development of educational programs that contributes to human capital quality improvement in agriculture. In this paper, an algorithm has been developed to expert training quality improvement. In general, the result of the work will contribute to the training of personnel for the industry and will ensure the achievement of a balance of qualifications between the labor market and agricultural education.

The recent changes in the Russian educational regulations have predetermined the search for new conceptual approaches and ways to improve the content and arrangement of pedagogical staff training. More attention is paid to the implementation of the professional standard of a teacher intended to set the etalon of a graduate of a pedagogical higher school, to identify the criteria for the assessment of pedagogues' qualification, to create the basis for their job descriptions and payment system. It is required to check the compliance of the professional standard of a teacher with the current national governmental standards for higher education. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in 2014 began the project for the modernization of pedagogical education with the objective to ensure efficient and good quality educational process aimed to train contemporary pedagogues. In compliance with that project, the modernization of pedagogical education is focused on the development of new models of educational programs for training pedagogues compliant with the global trends of pedagogical professionalization. The objective of this paper is to share the experience of testing a practice-oriented model for training pedagogues within pedagogical master's program. The main method is pedagogical experiment enabling to find the basics of the content and process of pedagogues training, to identify the set of means, methods and conditions of that process arrangement ensuring efficient establishment of professional competences and professional acts of a pedagogue in total constituting the basis of his/her qualification. Independent assessment results on the establishment of professional competences and acts of future pedagogues were submitted. The materials of this paper are of interest for scholars, masters, pedagogues.

The paper investigates the influences of globalisation on Russian higher education in accounting. Drawing on interviews with academic staff and secondary data sources, the paper discusses the tensions between local and global influences in higher education. The paper argues that globalisation has an ideological impact on accounting educators in Russia and shapes the accounting education discourse. Global discourse is seen as exclusionary, value-laden, capitalistic, imperialistic and marketing-focused. These changes result in the marketisation of Russian universities and may eventually lead to decreased educational quality and value of the academic profession.

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

Economic and political changes in contemporary society lead to reforms of many social spheres. The system of education in general and higher professional education in particular is no exception. The issue of ensuring the quality of education has recently attracted great attention in all countries of the world. The key problem of reforming education is raising its quality. In this paper, the object of research was the quality of education provided by higher education institutions. The authors have conducted the analysis of models for raising the quality of education and qualimetry of the laboratory work quality based on a survey of teachers and students. The QFD method was described by the example of its application in five universities of the Russian Federation. It has been proved that this method can provide the university with a planning tool with which higher education institutions can provide services that fully meet the requirements of customers (students, parents, employers, the state and society as a whole), thereby ensuring the suitability of the system to meet external requirements -- the Fitness-for-Purpose approach (building goals based on the external environment). In addition, it has also been substantiated that the application of this method in the system of higher professional education will ensure the suitability of the system to achieve its own goals -- the Fitness-for-Purpose approach (development, improvement, effective management). Thus, the QFD method will make it possible to support of all types of coordinated activities for the leadership and management of higher education institutions in relation to quality, as well as a set of developed regulatory and methodological documents that determine the content, technologies, methods and means of work of all officials, teachers and students to further improve the quality of educational process, thereby ensuring the competitiveness of higher education institutions and effective development on the global market of educational services.

The article considers the problem of graduate quality assessment from the perspective of various participants of the educational sphere. The research features the current state of education. It focuses on the national specifics that affect a particular model of education during its implementation. Modern education is characterized by interaction of several local educational environments and the adoption of innovative features of one national education system by other countries. The authors compared various national education systems and pointed out the following common traits: transformability, modelability, openness, and adaptability. As for the education of the early XXI century, it appeared to include the following characteristics. First, educational institutions satisfy people's needs for educational services. Second, the informative capacity of classes is increasing. Third, educational institutions are involved in the ranking process. The study features the opinions of employers, students, and professors regarding the quality of training of social specialists in the spheres of education, healthcare, and social protection. The paper describes advantages and disadvantages of various national education models. The authors stress the need for the development and implementation of a Russian national education model and formulate its key guidelines. They assessed the efficiency of the current education model via opinions of employers, students, and professors on the formation of professional competencies in students of Bachelor and Master Programmes. The opinions of the three groups of respondents underwent a comparative analysis. According to the employers, the level of professional training was higher in Masters than in Bachelors. The professors demonstrated a more critical attitude to the level of Bachelors and evaluated it as average. The students appeared more positive in their assessment of Bachelors, but they also evaluated Masters as more skilled than Bachelors. The obtained data can be used to develop technologies that could facilitate the educational process and improve the graduate quality in higher education institutions.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is among the most common developmental disorders of great social significance. Adequate intervention can increase socialization of autistic individuals, both increasing their quality of life and decreasing financial burden. Initiatives to introduce modern standards of autism treatment and education in Russia were launched several years ago; unfortunately, there is little information on the perceived problems and barriers, which may hinder further development of autism support system. This paper presents the results of a stakeholder survey including both service receivers (parents of children with ASD) and service providers (professionals working with ASD children) from different regions of Russia. The study reveals that the quality of specialized services related to autism treatment is assessed much higher than the quality of inclusive education and accessibility of general education and other general services available to children and adults with ASD, highlighting the importance of implementing an interdepartmental system providing continuous support to people with ASD and facilitating their inclusion and social integration. The results also show that general attitude to distant diagnostics and education, on par to the estimates of quality of services related to distant education, are lower in non-capital regions, where the need for such services is higher due to lower accessibility of person-to person services. The present study may be of use both for professionals in autism treatment and education, and for the specialists who may encounter persons with autism once in a while, as it brings a detailed estimation of several aspects of autism support both through the eyes of support receivers and providers.

This paper problematizes the dichotomy between neo-liberalism and socialism and the tendency to view the post-socialist condition as a process of convergence with 'Western' and 'global'. It does so by analysing the development and implementation of a quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) policy in school education in the context of the Russian Federation. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian national QAE policy has changed greatly and currently resembles the agendas of transnational organizations in education. At the same time, the national policy and the political discourse on quality continue to draw on Soviet as well as post-Soviet legacies. Juxtaposing the case of Russian QAE policy with theoretical models of post-bureaucratic governance in education, the paper also questions clear-cut distinctions between 'old' and 'new' governance regimes. The analysis in the paper is guided by two questions: 1) What has changed and what has remained unchanged in Russian education policy with the transition from the Soviet period to current state? and 2) How do different legacies and influences contribute to the QAE policy implemented at the local level? The brief inquiry into the history of Russian QAE policy focuses on three periods: post-war Soviet Russia, the transition period of the 1980-1990s and modern Russia. Recognizing the specific characteristics of each of the reviewed periods, the paper highlights complexities, contradictions and continuities within and between previous and present regimes of education governance in Russia. The analysis of the QAE policy implemented at the local level demonstrates the blending of diverse legacies, and the prevalence of Soviet-era practices in school governance.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate continuing pedagogical education from a new perspective that is especially relevant during the development of an information society. Design/methodology/approach: The methodological framework of the study builds on the concept of teacher's personality establishment in the system of pedagogical education. Main stages of professional development were studied on the basis of educational institutions of the Baikal region. Thus, experiments were conducted at the Pedagogical Institute, Buryat State University Continuing Education Institute, Buryat Republic Institute of Educational Policy and the Buryat Republic Pedagogical College. The study used internship platforms of the above educational institutions. Findings: The study shows how the open online pedagogical space, which includes internship and innovative platforms, specialized departments, governing agencies on education, certificate centers, scientific and cultural institutions, higher educational institutions, and schools, reveals the model of continuing pedagogical education in regions. Practical implications: Individual forms of advanced training are proposed. Optimal ways to create a competitive environment in the system of professional development were identified by the authors. Originality/value: The reformation of the regional system of advanced training and its transition to a new level of quality allows organizing continuing improvement of teachers' professional competencies effectively. This paper can improve the professional competence of teachers, which will have a positive effect on the educational process and academic performance of students in general. The next stage in the improvement of teachers' competence can involve an exchange of experience at international conferences and participation in joint international educational programs.

Purpose: The export of Russian educational services worldwide was not considered by the Russian Government as a full-fledged economic sector until recently. However, the situation has changed since the early 2000s, when in 2002, the Russian Government approved the national strategy for higher education promotion abroad and since then has been actively working on development of incentives and measures to support Russian universities to better market themselves in a global competitive market place of higher education. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the authors use a systematic approach to analyze different instruments for promoting higher education services abroad, consider the current state of this issue in Russia and look at what difficulties may arise at various levels when the state attempts to implement its strategy. Findings: They are formulated as a set of marketing activities at different levels (national, regional and institutional), allowing a more advantage positioning of Russian universities in the global environment. Practical implications: This paper focuses on the development of a marketing strategy for universities in a dynamic setting. The urgency of the problem is determined by the fact that today universities have to deal with a number of challenges: the reduced funding; increased competition at the regional, national and global markets; the growth of the importance of international and national rankings; and demographic and social challenges. Effective positioning in the global market place can be viewed as a source of new opportunities, as well as a challenge, not easy to master in some cases. Originality/value: The paper scrutinizes strategies for the promotion of Russian universities to increase effectiveness of their positioning and create for them comfortable conditions for development in the world markets of educational services. The topic of marketing of educational services worldwide for a post-Soviet country is not an issue commonly addressed in the literature today.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to view the actual problems of the Russian system of higher education--lack of connection between labor market and market of educational services, decline in the quality of higher education in the country, reduction of intellectual potential of the youth, and commercialization of higher education, etc. Design/methodology/approach: The author offers approaches to complex evaluation of university education from the positions of social and economic effectiveness on the basis of the matrix of criteria; modern tendencies and perspectives of the development of educational environment are determined, as well as factors facilitating the achievement of the maximum effectiveness of educational activities in Russian universities. Findings: The author offers her own vision of the main determinants of the growth of the effectiveness of university education within the framework of Russia's integration into the global educational space. Originality/value: The paper views the actual problems of the Russian system of higher education--lack of connection between labor market and market of educational services, decline in the quality of higher education in the country, reduction of intellectual potential of the youth, and commercialization of higher education, etc.

Employing the analytical framework of a discourse-driven social change, this paper unpacks the neoliberal concept of "educational quality" in the course of Russian education modernisation reform from 1991 to 2013. Since the early 1990s, the global neoliberal discourse has served as the backbone for post-Soviet educational ideology. Alongside other major reform initiatives, the "quality revolution," proclaimed by the Russian Government in the early 1990s, signified a rhetoric shift away from the Soviet-era quality control towards a neoliberal quality assurance paradigm. Through fine-grained textual analysis of policy documents and political statements by key educational stakeholders, the analysis unpacks the discursive underbelly of the new quality paradigm, in an attempt to determine whether a paradigmatic transformation has taken place. The paper argues that despite the nominally proclaimed shift towards a quality assurance model of educational governance, the representation of educational stakeholders and responsibilities within the new quality paradigm continues to correspond to the Soviet-era command-and-control authoritarian model. The study challenges the popular claim of a neoliberal turn in Russian education and suggests that a neoconservative authoritarian approach to education governance has been smuggled in under the disguise of "quality assurance."

Purpose: Economic problems of the system of education were the object of interest of classics of economic science--A. Smith and A. Marshall--who viewed education as a source of public capital, and acquired skills and competences--as a part of national wealth. These ideas were further developed in the theory of human capital by T. Schultz, G.S. Becker, G. Psacharopoulos, P. Teixeira, and R. Solow. At that, specifics of modernization economic processes in the sphere of education, peculiarities of modern functional and financial state require conceptual consideration and provision of development of working mechanism of effectiveness of spending assets of endowment funds. The purpose of this paper is to determine the mechanism of effectiveness of spending assets of endowment funds on the basis of mathematical models. Design/methodology/approach: The paper offers a mechanism of determination of effectiveness of spending of endowment funds. Findings: Effectiveness of an endowment fund's effectiveness depends on the results of fund-raising activities, supporting relations with donators, and financing of targeted programs and directions of activities. This information is key information during the determination of results of endowment fund's activities for current and potential donators. That is why it should provide reports in the order of formation of endowment, received revenue from trust management, and direction of usage of revenues from endowment, for which a donator has given his assets, on a regular basis. Originality/value: In the modern system of higher education, the issue of search for new sources of financing for the purpose of improvement of quality of education and educational process, growth of wages of academic staff, attraction of foreign lecturers and specialists with practical experience of work from various spheres of production, and increase of stipends of the best students remains actual. The paper offers a mechanism of determination of effectiveness of spending of endowment funds.

Purpose: Modernization of Russian higher education is carried out with the purpose of its successful integration into the global educational environment. However, the contemporary management model of most Russian universities demonstrates a low efficiency level. The purpose of this paper is to identify the problems of organizing the universities' strategic development and to seek the opportunities to achieve strategic competitiveness of Russian universities. Design/methodology/approach: The basic research methods included the following: content analysis, expert evaluations, analysis of the modern concepts of universities strategic management, comparative analysis of high school practice of strategy development, and government regulations in historical perspective. Findings: The major result of the study is the conclusion that the most important problem of the competitiveness of Russian universities is the lack of strategic flexibility. We can say that there is a structural nature of the management crisis affecting the whole system of university education. Over the past 25 years, there has been a radical change in the basic institutional conditions for the development of higher education institutions in Russia: the volumes and changed model of financing; the market landscape and the regional environment; the conditions and the nature of the interaction with international partners, etc. At the same time, in most cases, the platform of this system and standards of internal policy have remained unchanged. Russian education practically lost its individuality. This paper shows the experience of strategic management at leading federal and regional universities of Russia, analyzes the implementation of their development programs, and gives examples of best practices in the use of strategic planning tools. Originality/value: The relevance and value of the paper is the following: for the first time, thorough attention has been paid to the accumulated potential of Russian universities, which has been formed over a long evolutionary path and now can be positioned as an important management resource in the organization of strategic management for enhancing the global competitiveness of the national system of higher education.

Relevance of this research is determined by quality improvement of professional engineering education. The purpose of this paper is to offer practical recommendations for those interested in establishment of education and research laboratories as a means of enhancing the quality of professional engineering education in design and production of composite parts. Structure and function analysis was the main approach within this research used to identify the functions and structure of the Center of Composite Technology as well as the purposes of education and research laboratories. Structure and function analysis approach, the main one within this research, was used to identify the purposes of education and research laboratories that all together provide synergetic effect in adaptation of a future professional to industrial conditions and make him or her able to meet competition in the labor market. Purposes of education and research laboratories were defined by 75 academics and 250 students at Kazan National Research Technical University n.a. A.N. Tupolev that took part in this study. Main results of the research are identification of the functions (professional and educational) and structure of the Center of Composite Technology as well as the purposes of education and research laboratories (design and simulation, material science, tooling manufacturing, preforms and prelaminates, molding, quality control, assembly and joining, equipment manufacturing). Significance of these results is that identified functions of the Center of Composite Technology allow considering the center an innovative component of the material and technical support of engineering education, providing practical training of students. Identified purposes of these laboratories set practical trends in engineering education as provided by industrial strategy of a region.

It's a common knowledge that the society and time we live in are characterized by continuous technological change and most of employee skills may become outdated fairly rapidly. Therefore, an enterprise that aspires to be successful and respond quickly to changes in the market environment should pay great attention to training programs of the employees. In this regard, it is important to develop guidelines and recommendations to improve the quality of mentoring as the system involving Mentoring Council, enterprise executives, mentors and training centers for mentors. The paper is intended to provide theoretical and practical contribution to training students of technical universities, as well as young personnel starting their career and experienced executives.

The urgency of the issue stated in the article is stipulated by the contemporary requirements to rural schoolchildren education, i.e. rise in its availability, quality and degree of specialization. The Federal State Education Standards have set an urgent, but at the same time challenging task to reach not only subject but also meta-subject and personal results in the educational process. Rural students consistently show lower subject results in comparison with those of urban schools. There is a challenge to improve the quality of education in rural schools, which is enhanced by the requirement to gain new educational results by means of universal instructional activities. The purpose of the present article is to reveal the identity of the concept of "balance pedagogy" as a methodological base for integrative-differentiated teaching of rural students and to describe its specific didactic technologies. The leading approaches to the study of this problem are systematic, synergistic, integrative-differentiated approaches, theory of dynamic balance. The essential results of the paper are (a) the author's definition of balance pedagogy as a methodological base for integrative-differentiated teaching of rural schoolchildren and a means to improve the quality of education, personal and meta-subject results in rural schools; and (b) presentation of the main characteristics of the level-and-style differentiation technology in terms of modular teaching programme as a practical tool of balance pedagogy.

Bologna process puts in a high claim for the modern European education in terms of competency building approach. The control is conducted by the agencies which monitor learning activity level in higher education institutions. This paper presents the aspects of higher education within the conduction of competency building approach projects in Europe and Russia. We propose the technology which evaluates students' professional competence qualimetricly. The technology represents the evaluation algorithm at all levels of student training.

The importance and relevance of research of questions is determined by the intensive development of the tourism and hospitality industry, the consequence of which is the increase of business needs for skilled personnel. The purpose of this paper is to examine and assess the main strategic trends in educational technologies and methods used for education of qualified personnel for the hospitality industry. For analysis of the modern educational processes in the hospitality industry the authors of the article have used theoretical and empirical research methods, economic-statistical and factor analysis, expert evaluations. In the article the conclusions about the quality of Russian education are made, the main trends in change of system of personnel education by the Russian higher education institutions are proved, including those in which personnel education for the hospitality industry is conducted. The main strategic directions of Russian education development are determined, the European experience of education for the hospitality industry is summarized, the main tendencies of the development of education system for the hospitality industry in Europe are formulated. Moreover, the application of professional standards in the Russian system of education for the hospitality industry is proved, and a draft of "road map" of the development of higher education system (on the example of personnel education for the hospitality industry) until 2025 is developed.

This article is written to inform educational community particularly in the respect of new tendencies in educational assessment and present a clear-cut picture of the recent studies conducted in the Black Sea Region. The review paper refers to the following countries: Georgia, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. It stresses the prevalent approach detected in these countries and sees the role of assessment as a tool to enhance the quality of education and obtain the reliable data that help professionals to make appropriate decisions in teaching and assessment.

The CDIO Standards are effective means for upgrading and improving the quality of basic engineering education. In 2013-2016, a group of 21 leading Russian universities became participants of '5-100 Russian academic excellence project' and focused on graduate and postgraduate engineering education. Evolution of the CDIO Standards for modernising and improving the quality of MSc and PhD programmes has become urgent need. For that reason, based on the general idea of the CDIO approach different conceptual models for graduate and postgraduate engineering programmes design were proposed and developed. The FCDI Syllabus v1 and FFCD Syllabus v1 developed by analogy with the CDIO Syllabus v2, as well as the FCDI Standards and FFCD Standards developed by analogy with the CDIO Standards are presented in the paper.

The late 20th century was an era of social, economic, technological, and political change, resulting in significant shifts in the perception of enlightenment, knowledge, and education. The impact of these changes have become quite apparent in higher education where there is now mounting pressure for faculty to deliver high quality education to an internationally mobile cohort and where institutions are striving to attract funding, researchers, research grants, top students, and teaching staff. To cope with the many challenges, new business models are needed. Introducing change, however, is fraught with many problems; in particular, institutional barriers among disciplines, management commitment, socio-economic factors, and cultural issues. In this paper, we take a look at and discuss three European higher education institutions currently undergoing transformation--a British, a Finnish, and a Russian--to draw attention to some of the inherent factors that higher education institutions face when they seek to implement new business models to manage the competitive environment for higher education.

In this paper we consider the question of how quality assurance can have a real, positive impact on the quality of teaching and learning at universities, considering the realities of different systems--the system of control and the system of quality culture--in using the example of two universities: the KNITU-KAI in Russia and the TU Dresden in Germany. The study involved 40 lecturers of technical courses and 120 third-year students of technical courses from both universities. The authors put forward a working hypothesis that quality assurance has a positive effect on the quality of teaching and learning if it carries out its informational, motivational and administrative functions. The results have shown that the aforementioned functions are not fulfilled by both universities and a special organizational culture is not the only condition that must be met for effective evaluation efforts. In order to fulfill motivational, informational and administrative functions, it is important as well that the quality assurance system is transparent and that all participants see that the surveyed data and results lead to measures for quality development. It is equally important that all university members participate in the process of quality assurance.

Summary: This ethnographic story explores fiction‐making in the context of audit cultures and accountability regimes. Based on a critical multi‐sited ethnography conducted between 2011 and 2015 in the Russian Federation, this composite narrative draws on eighty interviews, casual conversations, and observations at several universities. It documents how educators at higher education institutions responded to audit reviews by constructing paper façades of reports and curriculum documents that obscured what they were doing or how their departments were run. When an inspection took place, the reviewers focused on paperwork to infer the quality of educational services. The fictions and paper façades created to convince the state that institutions were functioning well also sheltered the illicit practices and corruption that operated at various levels of the institutional hierarchy. In this audit theater, faculty participated in producing fakery, dupery, and swagger that protected them from immediate punishment, but they ended up feeling cheated by their own production. As educators navigated new reporting requirements, they also made sense of the state's own fakery, hypocrisy, and duplicity. New relationships among educators, institutions, and the state created by accountability regimes produced a politics of disposability to sustain state fictions of success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the main results of a recent survey of private higher education institutions from twelve selected European countries (Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia) [in the framework of the UNESCO-CEPES project on "Private Higher Education in Europe and Quality Assurance and Accreditation from the Perspectives of the Bologna process Objectives," designed and implemented in collaboration with "Leon Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management (LKAEM) and the World Bank"]. After a brief review of the current incidence of private education in the selected European countries, the authors give a description of the survey. Then the main findings are structured according to the nine goals of the Bologna Process and their corresponding level of implementation in private higher education institutions, and also to provide comparisons with public higher education institutions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results and with some general remarks about the role of private higher education institutions in building the EHEA. (Contains 14 tables, 12 footnotes and 3 figures.)

The purpose of postcollegiate professional education is to train scientific and science education cadres of higher qualification. To a large extent, systematic and well-planned training accomplishes the tasks of maintaining and developing the country's constructive scientific, cultural, and intellectual potential; it ensures the continuity of the traditions of schools of science and pedagogy and serves to form the social elite whose members perform the functions of political and economic administration. In this paper, the authors contend that graduate programs in Russia are in need of fundamental changes on the conceptual level, and that it is essential to take a careful approach to the question of how to determine the effectiveness of these programs.