The educational organizations’ urgent transition to distance learning because of the pandemic has actualized the problems of assessing the results of mastering the disciplines. Online proctoring is becoming one of the leading tools for control, providing an objective independent assessment of compliance with academic ethics. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze students’ attitude towards distance learning and their ideas on the opportunities, disadvantages, and prospects of online proctoring. The pilot study conducted in the spring of 2021 was empirically based on the results of online questionnaires answered by 200 undergraduate students of various scientific specialties and humanities at Ural Federal University (1–4 years). We also used the method of semi-structured interviews with 10 students who had had an experience of a final test using online proctoring systems. The data obtained show that the main difficulties faced by students within the distance learning process are the lack of direct contact with the teacher, enormous bulks of information to be learnt independently, the increased health burden, and technical failures. Despite the emerging barriers, the young have successfully mastered the educational platforms (MS Teams, Zoom, Google Meet) and practised in passing remote credits and exams. Online proctoring narrows the chances of informal passing final exams, however forming and developing risk-taking and inventiveness among students. This can be explained both by low demand for mastering general education disciplines and by poor design of test assignments. Technical failures within testing are another problem of proctoring. For distance education, online proctoring seems a promising and in-demand tool for students to assess the results of their learning in professional disciplines. The lack of external control becomes a factor of academic dishonesty practices multiplication. The results of the study contribute to the further development of distance learning and online assessment of the quality of students’ mastering the completed disciplines.

In the international practice of higher education, a university has traditionally been considered as a center for education and science. A modern urban university, however, breaks through the boundaries of educational and scientific projects and pioneers the development of the learning, social, cultural, and intellectual environment of the city and its dwellers. In the view of the research-based and community-oriented mission of the university, there is a need to reinvent and further develop the communication strategies between the university and the urban residents. As one of the steps in this direction, the authors suggest communicating with the citizens through the promotion of university-developed scientific knowledge and research results among wider public. This will solve the challenges of making people interested in the fundamental and applied sciences, developing the human capital for the benefit of the regions, increasing the level of scientific literacy among citizens, creating conditions for the intellectual development of the youth, involving young people and representatives of other age groups in the research activities, and enhancing the prestige and social attractiveness of science. Pursuing these tasks, in this paper the authors study the practices and the formats of science promotion undertaken by the universities and suggest a model of a university-based center for public science.

The article studies the historical retrospective of the professional prestige of a university teacher in Russia and the criteria for assessing its current state. The study aims at finding out the «components» of the prestige of the profession in previous historical eras and at identifying modern teachers’ attitude to their profession in terms of their ideas about the evolution of the degree of its prestige.
Within this interdisciplinary research, the historical aspect is represented by a narrative, which reflects a retrospective of the university history of the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. The sociological aspect implies the method of semi-formalized expert interviews with 120 scientific and pedagogical workers of six Russian universities (2019–2021). The informants are divided into age groups: younger (35 and less years old), mature (36–50 years old), and older generation (51 and more years old).
The authors come to the conclusion that the profession of a university teacher in the imperial and Soviet periods was of high prestige. The study of the works of Russian and foreign scholars shows that today there prevails the opinion about the crisis of this profession. The crisis of the 1990s caused the greatest damage to the professional prestige of higher education in Russia. The informants of different age groups compare the state of professional prestige in the first post-Soviet decade and now not in favor of the latter. When characterizing the social status of a teacher, the representatives of the older generation indicate the higher prestige of this profession in the past. The younger generation of teachers tends to take modern professional realities for granted. Two-thirds of the respondents, admitting the weaknesses in a university teacher’s social status, highly assess the respectability of the profession in general. According to the informants’ opinion, the prestige of being a university professor is decreasing because of the teacher’s individual characteristics, his/her financial state (and the level of financing in this sphere), in-class overwork, lacking time for full involvement in scientific research, and the students’ consumer attitude to the educational process. At the same time, there was noted the informants’ somewhat idealized perception of a teacher’s image in foreign universities.
The results of our investigation might be applied by the authorities in order to take specific measures aimed at increasing the prestige of a university teacher. The research might be also of use for the universities’ implementation of personnel policy.

The article aims at presenting the experience of using the student engagement approach, which was developed on the basis of ideas of A. Astin, R. Pace, G. Kuh, P. Ewell, E. Pascarella, P. Terenzini, to assess the quality of education in Russian universities. This approach was originally implemented in the US higher education system at the end of the XX century. Due to its simplicity and relatively low costs demanded, as well as the possibility to develop effective specific recommendations for improving the educational process, this approach came to be further applied in other countries by single universities and even at national level. However, its applicability in the systems different from the US higher education is still questionable. The article presents the basic assumptions of this approach, the history of its development and spread across the world, and its potential for assessing the quality of higher education. The author pays particular attention to the implementation of the approach in Russian universities and its limitations due to peculiarities of national context. This paper is the first to summarize the results of Russian research on student engagement. It becomes possible to make certain conclusions about the applicability of this approach to the Russian system of higher education. Moreover, the author draws conclusions on the potential to compare student engagement data collected during different time intervals in different institutions and countries. Finally, the article gives practical recommendations on how to use this approach when solving different university problems. The paper is intended for university administrators to develop effective educational policy, for professors to improve teaching practices and student-faculty interaction, for researchers to understand the landscape of studies on student engagement and to distinguish promising directions for future investigations.

The authors’ purpose is to identify possible problematic grounds for students’ involvement in volunteer activities and to propose solutions for university management that contribute to overcoming non-participation among students. The article is based on theoretical ideas about the role of volunteering for young people, on theories describing the phenomenon of non-volunteering and its possible causes, as well as on the concepts of volunteering management in higher education. The empirical base of the research is 740 students’ poll data (all levels and years of study being included the sampling) and 12 focus group interviews taken in 2022. The results reflect the students’ volunteer activity dynamics during their studies at the university and show that the key factor determining the orientation to volunteer participation in the future is the self-identification of a student as a volunteer. We have identified three reasons for strategies to justify volunteer non-participation: utilitarian attitude to life; disappointment with the volunteer work organization that does not meet young people’s expectations; infantilism as a philosophy of being inactive. It is concluded that by increasing students’ awareness of opportunities to participate in volunteer activities and specific organizations implementing volunteer projects, the university can contribute to the growth of volunteerism among young people in the future. Using the example of educational course, the authors show how possible barriers can be overcome by teaching students the basics of volunteerism. The results of the study and the described educational experience will be interesting to researchers and can also be useful for all Russian universities in connection with the current tasks of youth policy.

The paper analyzes the pricing strategies of Russian state universities in the context of the competitors’ influence over the tuition-paying education market. The aim of the study is to find out how competition in local higher education markets affects the pricing strategies of Russian state universities. The empirical basis of the study is formed by the data of the Monitoring of Enrollment Quality at Russian Universities implemented by National Research University Higher School of Economics. With the help of pattern analysis methods (order-fixed and order-invariant pattern clustering), homogeneous groups of universities are identified taking into account indicators, which characterize the scale and quality of admission to bachelor and specialist programs. On the example of technical programs, the authors demonstrate the regression model for predicting the 2011–2019 education prices in universities of corresponding homogeneous groups. The results show that each homogeneous group of universities has one or several market leaders who serve as benchmarks for other universities in that group when setting tuition fees. At the same time, university pricing strategies involve orienting towards market leaders in their demand segments and specialty groups. The identified features confirm that competition among universities for students and funding leads to the appearance of market leaders in certain market niches. In some groups of universities, there are clear market leaders at the local and regional levels who have a significant lead over competitors due to the peculiarities of state policy and high heterogeneity of the Russian educational landscape.

Higher education is a sphere of the humanitarian sector and, despite the intangible nature of its products, does not cease to be a structural element of the national economy. The education sector is forced to compete for the labor market and for the attractiveness of the sector with branches of material production capable of introducing technological innovations. It requires increasing revenues by means of raising the cost of manufactured products, this raise having almost no performance justification. The resulting «cost disease» in the sphere of education makes the products of its non-material production lose their availability and attractiveness to consumers. The purpose of this paper is an econometric analysis of the 2012–2020 «cost disease» in Russian higher education. The article continues the study of 2000–2012 «cost disease» in higher education by I. V. Abankina, T. V. Abankina & P. V. Derkachev. The main research method is econometric (regression) modeling based on time series. The study is based on statistical data from Federal State Statistics Service and from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation. Our analysis shows that the 2012–2020 trends are similar to those of the previous period. Theoretically, the root cause of the «cost disease» is the lag in technological productivity. In fact, productivity growth rates in higher education exceed those in the economy for the entire period studied. Hence, there was no «cost disease» in 2012–2020 at all. The presence of this disease, however, appears to be confirmed by the manifestations of income deficits and price indices in Russian higher education.

An urgent problem in many countries is to increase the efficiency of using educational spaces, which is solvable through the creation of campuses. Campuses contribute to economic growth by localizing education, science, innovation and business in a single space. However, the establishment of campuses in the Russian Federation should be justified both for private investors involved in their creation and for the state, which accounts for a significant amount of their financing. Hence, it is necessary to determine the parameters that will allow creating the most popular and effective educational spaces on the territory of the Russian Federation. The paper considers various types of campuses available in world practice: urban and autonomous, local and dispersed, historical and modern, campuses of various models: English, French, American, Southeastern and satellite. Though known in world practice from the 18th century, campuses as an effective form of organizing educational spaces are currently only being created in Russia. Since 2021, there have been selected 17 projects, and the selection of projects will continue in subsequent years. The study resulted in parameters that are not taken into account when determining the maximum amount of subsidies aimed at creating campuses on the basis of existing regulatory documents. However, the analysis of the world practice shows that these parameters are necessary and directly affect the creation and further functioning of campuses. A system of additional criteria is of great importance, which makes it possible to assess not only the success of the project for the urban environment and the effect on the economy of the region, but also the expediency of financial investments, both for the state and for the private investor. The paper concludes that when considering projects for the creation of campuses, it is necessary to additionally take into account commercial and budgetary efficiency; the location of the campus, its scale, orientation, involvement in the urban environment; the load of infrastructure facilities to ensure the creation of the most effective campuses on the territory of our country.

In the context of current and upcoming reforms of higher education, there are acute issues of target orientation of new educational programs under the orders of external stakeholders (state, region, employers, students, and their families, etc.), as well as their promotion for subsequent implementation to obtain the target result, ensure employment of graduates, satisfy customer requests.
The purpose of the study is to present a case of effective promoting a new type of higher education programs, which involve vertical school-university integration, to formulate recommendations for their promotion, and to evaluate the results of recruitment.
The following research methods are used: analytical and comparative, analysis of documents, labor market segments review, marketing promotion plan formation, key performance indicators analysis etc.
The case analysis shows that in the context of competition for applicants, the use of activity-based tools for promoting educational programs, which imply immersion in practice-oriented learning from school (for instance, involving schoolchildren in university projects), as well as other forms of active marketing can give better results than traditional approaches.

The conditions for the development of the modern world community are constantly changing and becoming more complex. They have a serious impact on the activities of organizations and enterprises in the sectors of the national economy. Higher education institutions are also under the influence of changing conditions. This can be seen via new serious problems and risks, including reputational ones that require special attention and response, and an effective state policy to support domestic universities. The purpose of the article is to consider the new conditions for the development of Russian universities and to determine the current reputational risks in their activities.
The following results have been obtained within the study: the changed conditions for the Russian universities’ activities are assessed; the reputational risks of higher education institutions due to the latest operating conditions and development trends are identified, analyzed, and justified.
The threats to the universities’ reputation appear due to the pressure of global sanctions and due to domestic problems: the deteriorating demographic situation, the transformation of the higher education system, the decline in the training of scientific personnel, the slowdown in the development of the academic profession, the spread of coronavirus infection, etc.
Today’s state policy in the field of higher education creates prospects for further development of Russian universities, for increasing the efficiency of their activities and competitiveness in the educational services market, and, on this basis, for strengthening their reputation.
The results of our research may be of interest to the heads of higher educational institutions, to their teaching staff, as well as to the scholars who study the problems of higher education management.