Russian educational policy in the recent years has been directed towards realization of institutional and infrastructure transformation of universities. This brought about governmental programmes aimed for development of leading Russian universities and for their competitive growth in the Russian and world markets. Russian universities began competing among themselves to achieve the key performance indicators (KPIs: publication activity, citation ratio, the share of income resulting from scientific activities in the university budget, the number of foreign students, the percentage of foreign teachers, the number of joint international educational programs etc.). It is quite obvious that science-related KPIs are generally more relevant and objective than education-related ones. Therefore, there appears the key question, whether the Russian universities are capable to fulfil their main mission - to provide highly skilled globally completive specialists, who would be able to work in conditions of the innovative knowledge-driven economy and all-world competition. The subject of our research is the profile relevance of employability of the graduates of the leading Russian universities - participants of Project 5-100. This KPI is not formally among the key indicators of Project 5-100, but believably belongs to the most important ones in evaluating the educational quality of any university. In this paper, we address this issue by using the new quantitative data from the biggest Russian social network «Vkontakte». By our research, we are bringing this new source of information to this research domain, and by doing so, we are getting access to data which are generated directly from the graduates themselves without any mediators or filters. On the basis of this information we conclude that more than 50 % of the Russian graduates are not employed according to their specialization after they leave university. This obviously reflects weak correlation between the content of their education and the demands of the employers, and also dissatisfaction of the latter with the quality of education provided by the universities. This means that even the leading Russian universities do not provide the necessary level of links with employers, despite the high demand for the skilled workforce at the labour market. According to the results of the analysis, we can state that the problem of non-educational employment of Russian university graduates concerns all areas of training and all regions of the country, and, therefore, is systemic in its nature. In general, the situation in the country looks approximately the same. There is a difference only in the effectiveness of employment between the various subject areas. The employed in the best way are graduates-physicians and IT-specialists, in the worst way - specialists in social and human sciences and jurisprudence. The novelty of the research is in the fact that the social network «Vkontakte» has never been used before to analyze this topic on the country-wide level. The research results appeared to be quite close in qualitative and quantitative sense to the previously studies, undertaken by the portal of Superjob.ru and by Petrozavodsk State University. Having addressed the same subject, but using different data, we came to comparable conclusions with them, but each time 5 years one after another (Superjob.ru - 2007, Petrozavodsk State University - 2012, ITMO University - 2017). The profile relevance of employability of the graduates of the leading Russian universities keeps being at the same level of 45-50 %. Our version is 46 %. Unfortunately, the visible progress in this area is still absent. The key conclusion of the study is the following: the Russian system of university graduate's employment is unbalanced and not effective. More than 50 % of graduates leave Russian universities «for nowhere». An integrated approach to the organization of labour force planning is required, in particular, to the development of foresights of specialists in the main areas of the future economy.

The current growth of scientific knowledge has intensified the problem of research performance assessment. However, there is still a lack of the unified assessment methodology, largely due to the changing nature of modern science. At present, knowledge is increasingly generated by collective actors - research teams, rather than by individual scientists. These collective actors constitute a complex self-developing and evolutionary system, making its evaluation rather problematic. By using a goal-oriented approach, this paper seeks to identify specific characteristics of various research team types and suggests a qualitative criterion against which their research performance can be measured. It is shown that a research team forms and evolves around a goal that is shared by all its members; this common goal defines both structural-managerial characteristics of such a collective actor and qualitative attributes of attained research objectives. The obtained results - research team models and the qualitative criterion of their performance - can be used as a platform for further research into the cross-cultural, ethical, and economic dimensions of research teams, as well as for assessing research performance of actual teams.

The authors look into the role of higher education system of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra in the development of innovation processes and present serious arguments supporting the need for consolidating the efforts of state and regional authorities, companies, research and education institutions in the field of forming new economy model based on innovations and competitive at the global level. Using the logic of non-renewable resources, the authors demonstrate inevitability of innovation changes of autonomous region economics. The analysis conducted demonstrates the need for creating teaching research center that would serve as a vehicle and system integrator of innovation processes in the region. The article is addressed to a broad range of specialists representing state authorities, regional authorities, companies, education, and research institutions.

The goal of this original research paper is to analyze the state and the staffing problems of the priority directions of the socio-economic development in Russia and to reveal the required directions to modify the staffing approaches within the continuous education in general and in higher education institutions in particular. We here study and generalize the contents of the state programmes, which support the priority directions of the socio-economic development in Russia in terms of staffing, consider questions of the methodological and legal aspects to support these programmes with regards to manpower training. Our research has shown that in most of cases the implementation of the programmes is not supported by the required amount of staffing of various skill levels. This fact requires revisiting and reworking of these state programmes within one framework. Based on this analysis, this article proposes the concept of such framework together with a specially designed model to monitor and assess the state of the continuous professional education system, which can form the basis for further deeper theoretical and applied research and development both in the field of continuous education and in the area of educational institution development and management. This work presents results of the unique and complex generalized analysis of the state and the staffing problems of the government programmes, the analysis being carried out for the first time in practice. These results can be implemented in practice by the government officials and management to undertake the actions of revisiting and reworking the socio-economic programmes and to take managerial decisions to further sharpen the structure and develop the system of the professional continuous education.

The purpose of the article is the analysis of the dynamics of graduate school admission quotas for educational and scientific organizations over the last 10 years. The analysis shows that in the last 5 years a significant number of regional universities subordinated to the Ministry of education and science experienced a sharp reduction of graduate school admission quotas. The goal is achieved by the use of extensive statistical material on the higher education system, including the level of post-graduate training; the network of dissertation councils; regulatory documents in the field of education. Subject area includes all levels of higher education, the system of highly qualified scientific personnel certification, regions of the Russian Federation, Federal ministries and departments. The result of this study is the development of postgraduate training levels in various ministries/departments, branches of science for the Ph.D. defense as well as efficacy criteria for postgraduate study according to various criteria. The study revealed that in the field of natural sciences 75 % candidates defended after post-graduate training; for organizations subordinated to the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia and the Russian Government the figure is 85 %. As a consequence, this fact may serve as justification for abandoning part-time postgraduate courses for a candidate degree in several branches of science in the medium term. The study will serve as a basis for creating the forecast needs of the Russian economy in the transition to the 6th technological system, and as a consequence, the adjustment of management decisions on the volume of postgraduate study admission quotas and their reallocation among ministries and agencies. The originality and value of the article lies in the introduction of new factual information on the activities of the system of training and certification of highly qualified scientific personnel and analyses of these data into scientific circulation.

Today the rankings processes cover many aspects of social life. The scientific and educational activities are no exception. The article presents Russian regions distribution on the formal indicators of scientific personnel training. The regions and cities are ranked on the number of dissertation councils and on the number of awarded doctoral and master's theses in 2015. From the author's point of view, the noncompliance exists for the indicators of scientific personnel training and the development of science in some regions of Russia.

The authors present a case study of the Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod concerning the motivation and professional plans of postgraduate students, as well as the factors that influence their choice of an academic career. Peculiarities of professional interests of postgraduate students enrolled in natural sciences, social sciences and humanities programs are considered. Research method: a standardized on-line questionnaire survey of postgraduate students (N = 427). The sample adequately reflects the proportions of the university's doctoral school by subject, age and gender. It was established that the previous experience of studying at the same university, the reputation of a faculty or a specific doctoral program play the main role among the factors that determine the choice of the university when students enroll in the doctoral school. Over 80 % of postgraduate students did not consider other universities as a possible place of study. It was also found that the focus on professional activities in the field of science and higher education clearly expressed at the beginning of training can change in the course of studies. The proportion of postgraduate students who retain their steady focus on academic professions essentially depends on the area of studies and amounts to an average of about 55 %. Postgraduate students who study in social sciences and humanities often switch to a «non-academic» career path, since they are not ready for territorial mobility. The authors substantiate their conclusion that the low level of territorial mobility is one of the key factors that reduce the effectiveness of the institution of doctoral education in relation to the implementation of its main function of reproducing the human potential of science and higher education. Following the analysis of empirical data, possible measures aimed at increasing the effectiveness of doctoral programs are discussed: developing a system of grant support for dissertational research, enhancing the links between dis-sertational subjects and major research projects, diversification of doctoral programs, introducing professional degrees into the legal framework (for example, in such fields as public administration, management and business, jurisprudence, education). The results of this research may be of interest to academic and administrative personnel of higher educational institutions involved in doctoral education management.

In order to find out if it is possible to improve efficacy of conducting internal audits, the article analyzes existing approaches to this procedure. It proves that modern information technologies are not sufficiently used to increase efficacy. The main reasons behind this problem are indicated. The results of the analysis form the basis for the suggested procedure of automated electronic internal audit results processing. This procedure provides objective and timely formation of important document on the state of QMS -«Protocol of QMS functioning analysis by executives)) and to identify «narrow points» in QMS functioning with the aim of their further elimination. This question is important due to the growth of information scope, of the list of tasks arising from the constant increase of departments involved into the audit, and of the list of standards checked according to the requirements of State Standard RV 0015-002-2012 QMS - System of Developing and Implementing the Product. The variant suggested for conducting electronic internal audit makes it possible to decrease the amount of result processing; to increase the number of processing parameters; to increase their efficacy; and to decrease the number of technical mistakes in forming data for managerial decision making. It can be used by different university structures involved into conducting internal audits for created management systems: the system of social responsibility management, power management system. Suggested methods for conducting internal audits for fulfilling the requirements of regulating documents (management systems standards) can be applied for other large - scale inspections requiring the control over multiple legislative requirements. The procedure has an opportunity for operational processing of obtained data and automatic formation of necessary data into reports according to legislative requirements.

The article aims at shaping conceptual research issues for a comprehensive examination of the multiple dimensions of student-centred learning as an integrity of its organizational, pedagogic, methodological and developmental perspectives. The relevance of the article is conditioned by a current lack of a research discourse in the area of student-centred learning at the university level among the domestic academic community. The methodology used embraces desk studies to analyse the available domestic and foreign resources relating to the issue, the method of comparative analysis, elements of social project planning, as well as the method of rationalizing meanings. The results of the research point to the dominance in the Russian research tradition of the analysis of student-centred learning largely on the primary and secondary school level from purely pedagogic, methodological and didactic perspectives, without giving due attention to its application in higher education and relevant organizational and legal frameworks. In this context there is a need to shape a comprehensive approach to the organization and implementation of student-centred learning, which calls for relevant research and development of norm-setting, organizational and methodological documents and guidelines. As possible examples of good practice, foreign practices responding to the goals of modernizing higher education are analysed that can be adapted to the Russian context, and concrete conclusions are proposed aimed at effective implementation of student-centred learning at universities, including from the perspective of change management. The content of the publication can be used to enhance efficiency of universities' performance, and form the content of continuing training programs and university curricula for teachers and university administrators. Also the content of the article can trigger serious research projects relating to fostering student-centred learning at universities. The scientific novelty is in the comprehensive multi-facet examination of the application of student-centred learning in higher education where its introduction requires addressing methodological, organizational and norm-setting issues, and development of appropriate competences of university teachers and administrators.

The article is of a research type. Its aim is to present evaluation of key educational communities of Ural macroregion universities: academic and teaching community and students' community dealing with different aspects of university management. The empirical basis of the publication consists of the results of sociological research conducted by Ural Federal University team in 2016-2017 under the supervision of one of the authors. The research included expert interview with representatives of academic and teaching community and university administration, as well as mass poll for university lecturers and students of Ural Federal University. The article presents evaluation of management of teaching and research activities of students and lecturers. It demonstrates the degree of their inclusion into university management system and satisfaction with existing situation in this sphere. The level of preparedness of each educational community to participate in different forms of managerial activities is determined. The research results are seen by the authors in the reflection of existing prerequisites for transforming university management as a part of transition from linear to nonlinear higher education model in the macroregion. The conclusion of the article is set on the need for qualitative changes in the system of university management towards openness, democratization, participativity as a prerequisite for improving its social efficacy. The importance of the research is in identifying the prerequisites for transforming university management at the level of the Russian macroregion (Federal Area). For the first time it demonstrates the problems of university management in the macroregion from the point of view of subjective opinions, positions and evaluations of main educational communities. The peculiar feature of the article is the demonstration of positive perspectives of university management related to transformation from linear to nonlinear model.

This article is aimed at identifying key peculiarities of such type of educational policy as university mergers -their main stages, types and declared aims. During the research we analyzed cases of university mergers and takeovers since 1990s to present moment which allowed for identifying and describing four Russia - specific educational policy waves. Based on the authors' classification, there are given basic characteristics for each of identified waves: «Universitization», «Federal Universities)), «Optimization», «Pillar Universities)). Classification grounds include such possible forks as similarity of university academic profiles, formal hierarchy of uniting organizations, remote geographical positions, and, importantly, subject of decision making concerning mergers. Besides that, the article for the first time introduces into the context of university merger research such notions as «mobilization», «optimiza-tion», and «reprofilization» describing basic motives of university reorganization. Prevailing motive behind each of the merger waves is also given. The research presented can be continued in the form of detailed analysis of university mergers process with particular attention to «human factor» of merger procedure and creation of new organizational culture in merged universities. The results of this research can be used in planning potential mergers and evaluating completed university reorganizations.

The paper presents the current issues of creating the methodological foundations of the additional education system development in the field of scientific and technical creativity on the university platform. Practice-oriented scientific and technical clubs of students' and pupils' creative development must be the territories for solving the high-level tasks associated with creating a fundamentally new system of engineering education in the country. Methodical bases of the estimation of efficiency of their activity were created using functional and stakeholders' approaches in order to develop a methodology aimed at finding mechanisms to improve their activities within the framework of the Federal Programme «Development of education». The presented methods were replicated within the framework of series of events held in October and November 2016, and approved on the basis of survey materials of 116 universities and in the 7 universities which became the pilot territories. The paper includes a description of the methodology for assessing the effectiveness of the practice-oriented scientific and technology clubs on the university platform based on a functional approach, in which each selected function corresponds to a system of indicators characterizing it. The system of functions has been formulated in accordance with the key vectors of development of the structures under study, following the definition of the concept. Stakeholders' approach that can be used as a base for the internal control of such clubs system has become another methodological basis of researching the effectiveness of practice-oriented scientific and technology clubs of students' and pupils' creative development. Thus, the key types of stakeholders and their contribution to the development of clubs and the expectations system, the satisfaction of which is an indicator of the effective activity of the structures have been discussed in the paper. The practical use of the above mentioned materials can significantly improve the efficiency of the practice-oriented scientific and technology clubs of students' and pupils' creative development, as these clubs allow us to identify difficulties in their development.