The paper is aimed at reviewing the first outcomes of the forced transition to the online higher education within two years of COVID-19 pandemic. The study focuses on advantages and disadvantages of the online education as perceived by the main stakeholders of the education process. The author summarizes the results of the large-scale sociological surveys of teachers and students of the Russian universities. These surveys were conducted by the HSE University, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow State University, and RUDN University. New unpublished data from an HSE University Monitoring of Teachers’ and Researchers’ Life conducted in December 2021 is also attracted. The author examines contradictory views of teachers and students regarding the distant learning. Special attention is paid to the opportunities and shortages of the online education, comparative quality of distant learning and psychological conditions of students. Finally, general conclusions are made with regard to the increasing de-subjectivation of relationships in the teaching process and prospects for the distant learning after the pandemic.

Launched in the summer of 2021 the «Priority 2030» Strategic Academic Leadership Program, despite being a logical extension of the Russian Academic Excellence Project, differs significantly from it in terms of its priorities. While the Russian Academic Excellence Project was primarily oriented on achieving the increase of the global competitiveness of Russian universities, the new Program primarily encourages universities to actively participate in the socio-economic development of the regions of the Russian Federation. The priorities of the new program happen to coincide a lot with the concept of an entrepreneurial university proposed by Burton R. Clark in his «Creating Entrepreneurial Universities». According to this concept, the attention is focused on such elements of university development as a strengthened material core, an expanded periphery of development, a diversified financial base, stimulated academic structures and integrated entrepreneurial culture. All of them are directly related to the function of the university as a driver of regional development. This concept has become so familiar to the general public in the recent decade that the notion of the development of universities according to it is seen as a matter of course. But are Russian universities indeed capable of following this concept in their development and are they in fact doing so? How prepared are they to actually achieve the goals set by the program «Priority 2030»? To answer these questions, the authors of the article have developed a new set of tools for accessing the development of higher educational establishments in the paradigm of the concept of entrepreneurial university.
The article presents a detailed analysis of how the main elements of this concept are reflected in the practice of Russian universities. The results of the study showed that all leading universities have the characteristics of an entrepreneurial university. However, the development of the elements of an entrepreneurial university tends to be quite stretched out timewise, which creates corresponding risks affecting the effectiveness of the implementation of the «Priority 2030» project. The set of tools, suggested in the article, can be used for further analysis of the development of Russian higher educational establishments according to the concept of entrepreneurial university.

Prolongation of business and social activity of older people is becoming a national-scale task, and Universities of the Third Age (U3A) are a noticeable global phenomenon of lifelong education, aimed at solving this problem. This paper outlines the problematic field of the Russian experience in the development of U3A on the basis of higher educational institutions. The author systematizes and subjects to comparative analysis the scattered evidence of the Russian experience of U3A as a form of the HE activity in the market of educational services, collected in secondary sources and from open data on the websites of universities. As key results this paper draws to conclusions that U3A in Russian universities are a new concept lagging world practices in terms of the scale and diffusion. Russian universities, even with sufficient funding, hardly create U3As struggling define U3As prospective for themselves. While creating U3As, they offer older students non-formal education aiming to create general cultural competencies, and repeat in this approach to the education content the Social Service Centre. This study allows to prove the importance of theoretical and practical development of the Russian model of U3A in universities, as well as to propose several management solutions. The main solutions are to rethink the role and functions of the U3A and to create them as divisions of leading universities to fulfil the strategic tasks of their development. U3A in the universities aim both at a new target market and at the implementation of the ‘third mission’ by the universities to ensure equal access to quality education beyond any, including age-related barriers.

Article shows the results of a sociological survey aimed at studying the opinion of the teaching staff on the impact of an effective contract on improving the research work indicators in universities in Russia and Belarus. The survey analyzes foreign and Russian evaluation of academic staff performance. A cross-sectional (single-point) study was the design. The focus of research was the academic staff of educational institutions that went over to an effective contract (Northern State Medical University, Russia) and without the implementation of an effective contract (Tobolsk Pedagogical Institute named after D. I. Mendeleev (branch) the University of Tyumen, Russia; National Institute for Higher Education and Belarusian State Pedagogical University named after Maxim Tank, Belarus), the overall number of respondents is 395. A semi-structured questionnaire created by the National Research University Higher School of Economics was used as a tool for sociological research. The study showed that both study groups are aware of an effective contract purpose and criteria evaluation frequency. Respondents from universities without an effective contract receive information from the Internet and have overestimated expectations of the future income level. Respondents of both groups underlined the importance of determining the greatest weight in calculating incentive payments for publication and grant activity, participation in scientific conferences. When implementing an effective contract, not all lecturers are ready to fulfill the criteria for research work, but they note the positive effect of its implementation on the indicators of scientific activity. In the group of respondents without an effective contract, one third expressed doubts about the significant impact of the implementation of an effective contract on improving the performance of research work. This article will be useful to the management of universities when calculating weighting coefficients according to indicators and criteria for evaluating the activities of the teaching staff for the appointment of incentive payments. An interesting study in the future may be a comparison of subjective assessments obtained in universities without an effective contract, and after its implementation in the same universities.

The presented article discusses the issues of involvement of university leaders in academic activities. The relevance of this problem lies in the fact that at the present day an active transformation of the roles performed by the head of the university is taking place. On the one hand, the traditional rector’s role format, expressed in the formula «first among equals», is in a state of constant and radical changes today. A particularly significant role in this process is played by the managerialization of university management and the resulting approaches to attract managers from other fields of activity to the rectors’ posts. They can be from government, business or public organizations. On the other hand, those university rectors, who came to the management system from academic environment, nowadays, as a rule, remain in the professional cohort of managers and rarely return to academic activities. In this regard, research issues arise: how do university leaders identify themselves and which community values are a priority to them? The authors of the article analyze the results of scientific activities of the heads of the country’s leading universities over the past 5 years. Based on the obtained data, a typology of preserving academic identity of university leaders at the present stage has been developed. Hypotheses for further transformation of the managerial and academic roles of Russian universities’ rectors have been formulated.
The article may be of interest to universities’ leading employees.

The paper is devoted to the consideration of the question of whether the Russian system of scientific attestation retains its integrity. The elimination of the monopoly of the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) in matters of control over the activities of dissertation councils and procedures for defending dissertations made it possible to increase the variety of rules and practices of scientific attestation. Many scientific and educational organizations have developed their own regulations governing the corresponding activities. At the level of legislation, the instruction was fixed for the self-awarding of academic degrees to set requirements not lower than how they are formulated in federal acts. The question of how exactly this instruction is implemented is of research interest. In addition, it is important to understand whether applicants can receive equal rights and opportunities in different parts of the modern system. During the study, three existing subsystems were identified, together forming a single system. The first of them consists of ordinary and special dissertation councils, regulated directly by the Higher Attestation Commission and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russia. The second subsystem is a collection of leading scientific and educational organizations that independently award academic degrees. Finally, the third subsystem consists of spiritual educational organizations, empowered to award theological degrees, which at the level of federal state educational standards are recognized as like other academic degrees. In all three subsystems, options for the defence of dissertations in permanent, one-time and joint dissertation councils were considered. Comparative analysis of regulatory and legal acts made it possible to highlight the similarities and differences of these subsystems, as well as to identify possible options for their development.

One of the key support mechanisms for research in universities is national scientific foundations, which often represent the main source of funding. However, the capacity of young universities to compete in national foundations’ calls is severely limited due to fierce competition and high qualification barriers. This hinders young universities’ chances to raise research funding and strengthens the Matthew effect. The establishment of proprietary research support infrastructure, in particular, internal research support funds may contribute to the development of human resources and reduce the qualification gap between young universities and classical or research-oriented ones. The purpose of the article is to analyze the practices of creating research support mechanisms in young universities. The study addresses the establishment of the Research and Development Fund at the North-West Institute of Management of RANEPA. We analyze the organizational model of the fund and the algorithm of the application campaign using the pilot call for funding literature reviews as an illustrative example. The main contribution of the article is a detailed description of the model of organizational processes of the fund and the management practices that support it. The article may be relevant for research managers of young universities and university branches, as well as for researchers interested in studying research support mechanisms.

The article presents the outcomes of research of the landscape and state of independent accreditation of higher education programmes in Russia. It gives definitions of accreditation types and evaluation criteria of performance of accreditation agencies; a group of leading agencies was identified on this basis. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the usage of open sources of information (official lists and registers of accreditation agencies, registers of accredited study programs) with presenting an analysis of a spectrum of activities of Russian accreditation agencies and the outcomes of their work. A ranking of such agencies also was made. Following the results of research, conclusions on relevance of independent accreditation of study programs and growth prospects of such accreditation were made.
The results of the study can be useful to the heads of higher educational establishments, including the heads of educational programs, for the reasonable choice of accreditation agencies that are more appropriate to their mission and strategic objectives. It also can be useful to the governing bodies in the field of higher education to monitor the state of infrastructure and the effectiveness of independent accreditation of education in Russia. Also the article can be helpful for applicants and employers.