This research is based on studying foreign works devoted to universities as participants of regional innovation ecosystems. The purpose of the article is to typologize basic strategies of universities’ behavior. The authors analyze the cases of various universities attempting to transform their behavior in accordance with the logic of the ecosystem approach. The authors’ typology of universities’ behavior strategies (passive, neutral, active) contributes to the literature on regional innovation ecosystems and the universities’ changing role in them. These three types are further subdivided into seven basic strategies of universities’ behavior according to the degree of their involvement in regional innovation processes, according to the internal and external environments of the university, as well as to the goals and objectives facing them. These strategies differ in five parameters: social and economic context, incentives for transformation, ecosystem structure, key participants’ roles, university’s goals and functions. The parameters are derived from a set of approaches synthesized by the «umbrella concept» of regional innovation ecosystems: the stakeholder approach, the concept of open innovations, the theory of agency relations, the transformational approach, the triple helix model and the quadruple helix model of innovation. The article might be of interest for those researchers who study the problems of regions’ economic and innovative development and the transformations of the modern higher education system in the world and in Russia. Of no less interest might it be for university managers, for representatives of regional authorities, and for businessmen aimed at cooperation with universities.

The idea of developing universities’ third mission, which lies in their contribution to the social and economic development of the region, city, and the whole country, has taken one of the central places in the research and management agenda of higher education in Russia. Despite the growing scientific and practical interest in this topic, the concept of the third mission has not been formed yet. Consequently, there is no clear understanding of how the academic community understands the role and meaning of the third mission. This paper aims at studying how students and staff members of one Russian national research university understand the third mission. Within this research, we conducted a series of focus groups with the university staff and students in 2021, the sample consisting of 74 informants. For data processing, there was used content analysis. The results showed vast differentiation of the informants’ views on the idea and objectives of the university’s third mission. For most of the respondents, the third mission equals the social mission. However, some also see it as an opportunity for professional development. Only a tenth of all the interviewees consider the third mission as an indicator of the university’s success and prestige. At the same time, the commercial component of this mission, which prevails in foreign universities, has been noted only by two informants. The study conducted might be of use for administrators and managers of Russian universities, as well as for researchers interested in developing the social involvement of students and university staff.

This research article discusses the latest changes within the triangle of higher education system coordination: the state – the market – the academic community, i. e. the changes in the interests of stakeholders. The topicality of this issue lies in the fact that the state of stakeholders’ interests determines the content of the factors of their impact on higher education institutions. The task of university management is to build effective mechanisms for adapting the universities’ activities to environmental factors. The author studies the stakeholders’ interests. For the state, these imply choosing a method for the effective use of budgetary resources, which would have a social and economic effect. For the market, these interests include forming educational level content self-sufficiency in the conditions of «massivization» of higher education and determining the content of education technologies, which take into account the specific features of the Z generation. For the academic community, here belongs the organizational design of the «plastic transformation» of academic identity that has taken place. The paper discusses the possibilities of solving the identified problems of university management, which have a strategic dimension, by creating a mechanism for active universities’ adaptation to the current environmental conditions. The research may be of interest to senior officials of higher education, as well as to the Russian academic community.

This paper studies the issue of simultaneous gaining several qualifications by a student. There are considered two models (schemes) of such a possibility: 1) implementation of one bachelor or master program within several areas of training; 2) implementation of an educational program in the area of training with additional professional competencies assigned to another area of training. The author names the debating points and the limitations of the models considered.

This paper presents the results of studying non-state actors’ institutional support for masters’ teachers. The authors analyze the tracks of the introduction and a «life cycle» of the master’s educational product created with the support of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation – the only non-commercial organization in Russia which supports students and professors at the master’s level. The study shows that the support for masters’ teachers makes a significant contribution to changing the role of this degree in higher education. There are outlined the long-term effects of supporting masters’ teachers, which are supposed to create an environment for developing talents, improving the educational results of master students, teachers’ advanced training, and integrating master programs into university’s and region’s strategic goals of development. For higher education researchers, for teachers and managers of master programs, for university administrators, and for higher education transformation decision makers in Russia.

The article studies the development of higher educational institution teachers’ digital pedagogical competencies. Considering the current situation of uncertainty in higher education, the rapid change of digital platforms and services, the growing dynamics of changes and the emergence of new knowledge in the sphere of digital didactics, the authors propose a concept of forming a university digital transformation team. To meet the demand for high-quality digital educational products, there are required special organizational solutions, including the creation of pedagogical teams. The purpose of the article is to develop a model for assessing individual and team digital pedagogical competencies, which allows making managerial decisions and eliminating the lack of competencies in a team at the stage of designing digital educational products and services. The study analyzed the existing models of digital pedagogical competencies and drew the conclusion on the need to refine them with specific tools for assessing current individual and team digital pedagogical competencies for the development and implementation of an educational product or project. Based on the model proposed, the paper puts forward a general concept of a professional retraining program, which consists of three areas of assessment: technical, pedagogical, subject (area of research, direction of training). Based on the analysis of Ural Federal University’s experience of implementing distance learning using digital educational resources, the authors give recommendations on how to improve the efficiency of the development teams and the implementation of digital educational products. This publication might be of interest for managers of the higher education system, as well as for scholars and teachers interested in digitalization, digital didactics, digital transformation of universities and individualization of education.

The paper examines the rules and procedures of the doctoral students’ admission at Russian universities. The inefficiency of the selection process often becomes the subject of discussion in the studies devoted to the low performance of Russian doctoral education, but these studies lack structured information about the current rules and procedures. The present research closes this gap. Using the quantitative content analysis of the local admission rules of 150 random Russian universities, we estimated the prevalence of various admission practices. Two groups of universities are compared in the study: those with and those without special statuses (federal, national research, flagship, participants of the «5-100» program), since the presence of such a status implies that the university implements a set of measures aimed at developing doctoral programs and increasing the graduate students’ demand. The results of the study show that despite the absence of the regulatory restrictions on the choice of selection tools, Russian universities tend to choose fairly formal procedures: traditional exams and consideration of the individual achievements (papers, patents, diploma with honors). More flexible tools to assess the applicant’s motivation, his or her research experience, and plans for a dissertation are extremely rare and appear in universities with special statuses. The results of the research can be useful for the heads of the doctoral education departments at Russian universities, as well as for other staff involved in the process of the doctoral students’ admission.

According to the Federal Project «Russia is an attractive country for studying and working», by 2030 the number of foreign students should increase by 1.5 times compared to 2021. In recent years, higher education educational institutions of higher education have made significant progress in attracting foreign students on average, their annual growth in the number of foreign students in Russian universities in during the last previous three years has beenbeing about 6 % per year. The attraction ofAttracting foreign students in recent years has been associated with serious challenges: the pandemic and quarantine restrictions (2020–2021), the forced transition of universities to distance learning (2020– 2022), the transformation of the geopolitical situation, the allocation of the category of unfriendly countries, the rejection of the Bologna format of the organization of the educational process organization. These factors have also left their mark oninfluenced the admission campaign of the 2022–2023 academic year. The authors of the articlethis paper aim to at identifying the key problems of internationalization of education internationalization in modern conditions. We propose fundamentally new managerial and legal solutions for the development of educational migration developmentat a qualitatively new level. The empirical basis of the study was a university international services employees’ survey of employees of international services ofpoll universities and the official statistics of international and Russian organizations. The main research methods are formal legal and comparative legal. The article may be useful tomight be of use for the employees of educational authorities, uni versity management, employees and of university international services of educational institutions of higher education, for university managers, and for international education experts in the field of international education.

The article discusses methodological aspects and practical experience in designing digital services for the educational market. There are defined basic requirements for the creation of digital services, their properties and characteristics. Based on the theoretical analysis, it is proved that the most promising way of designing digital services, which determines their configuration and user capabilities, is the platform approach. The analysis of the available educational platforms is carried out, their advantages and disadvantages are shown. The authors present a digital services designing methodology of their own, worked out with the help of the progressive Agile and Waterfall methodologies. The paper gives an example of the developed methodology approbation within the project of the Citadel Education online learning platform, focused on the implementation of adaptive educational programs with the possibility of choosing individual trajectories. This research is brand new, as it systematizes theoretical ideas about the creation of digital services with specific product characteristics and develops a methodological base for the creation of customized and technological educational services that meet today’s user needs. The results of the study are of particular interest in the context of foreign educational platforms withdrawal from the Russian market and may be useful for university leaders, who solve the problems of improving educational programs competitiveness, implementing hybrid learning models, and managing the portfolio of training courses.