The purpose of this article is to analyze trends in Russian higher education development during the coronavirus pandemic. The paper considers main problems faced by Russian universities in their students’ transition to distance learning. Particular attention is paid to the problem of the «digital inequality», which became urgent in the conditions of online teaching organization. It is shown that the «digital inequality» does not only mean differentiating students by their having necessary equipment to study remotely. The issues of «digital inequality» are being investigated at the levels of regions, universities, teachers and students. At the same time, the authors substantiate the thesis that it will not be possible to solve the problem of the dynamic development of the Russian higher education system within the framework of the current model of budget financing, and thus propose approaches to its change.

Spring 2020 saw most Russian universities’ switch to distant learning due to the threat of COVID-19. The forced transition imposed new demands on faculty and students, who had to quickly adapt to the new educational conditions. These changes raised concerns about the quality of distant learning. The purpose of this study was to identify which students expressed more anxiety on expecting difficulties associated with a lack of understanding educational material under new circumstances. The study was based on the data of 6,230 Ural Federal University students polled in March 2020. Regression data analysis showed that the fear of not being able to cope with learning was more typical for the 1st and the 2nd year bachelors, for students who lowly estimate their self-regulated learning skills, for students who expected difficulties of communicating with teachers and of being motivated, as well as for students who attended classes for the sake of learning. The authors discuss possible measures to support students in the conditions of rapid and mass transition to distant learning.

Students’ dishonest behavior is one of the most significant problems of higher education all over the world. Therefore, researchers and university administrators attempt to develop corresponding prevention measures. The measures can be aimed at either punishing students or engaging them in ethically sustainable academic practices, the second type becoming more and more popular in universities abroad. In this paper, discourse analysis is used to explore university policies and public statements of the rectors of Russian universities participating in the 5–100 project. The analysis helps to understand what kinds of discourses, argumentation and ways of their linguistic representation are used by Russian universities to represent their position towards students’ academic dishonesty and to influence students’ behavior. This paper might be of use for university administrators and managers, as well as for those who professionally investigate students’ academic dishonesty, to analyze and reform strategies for students’ dishonesty prevention.

The author considers the university existing in two modes: as an organization (a system of functional units) and as an intellectual polis (a self-governing community of active and autonomous subjects). Being an intellectual polis, the university is able to act on the frontier of science and technology, to create innovations, and to act as an institution for the development of society and human. A hypothesis is proposed: the development policy, understood as building a polis (configuring the interests and goals of various actors, forming the university community, regulating its life), is immanent for the university. It is this policy that corresponds to the complexity of the university as a system with many centers of activity and potential points of growth.

The method of conceptual analysis as applied to studying the university policy reveals the following significant problems and, correspondingly, the following lines of analysis: 1) defining the subjects of university community and the conditions of their appearance; 2) structuring the political reality – explicating interests, distinguishing and solving contradictions, searching for balances, adopting political decisions, creating a «social contract»; 3) building the policy, which includes special analytics, creating a space for communication, shaping the university community, working with ideologemes, discourses, traditions, and norms; 4) implementing local policies. Of particular importance for the university is the participatory policy, which makes it possible to mobilize the activity and initiative of employees and students, and the policy of partaking, which involves partners, stakeholders, alumni in development processes.

The development policy is generally aimed at changing the entire way of life and activity, the type of relations and communications within the university, i. e. at creating a favorable environment for the growth points uprise and for scientific, educational, cultural, entrepreneurial etc. initiatives and projects implementation.

The paper is originally associated with applying the concept of university policy in the context of the university development problems. This work can be used in management consulting and as an element of educational programs for rectors and university management teams.

The transition to the knowledge economy focused attention on the higher education system development and its problems, and put the universities in the situation of competition for limited resources. Free and controlled competition brings a chain of interrelated, sometimes contradictory concepts applied to higher education as a socially significant area. The authors of this research article by means of conceptual analysis aim at identifying the relationship between the concepts of «competition», «competitiveness», «efficiency», and «cooperation» regarding the higher education system. Competition and cooperation are considered to be factors which increase the efficiency of universities’ functioning. At the same time, there are contradictions in the justifications for the need to create competitive conditions for universities and in the definitions of the concept of efficiency, University is understood to be a commercial organization, its indicators being locked in its internal environment, whereas its main functions (reproduction of intellectual capital, improving the quality of human resources, orientation to the needs of the labor market) come to be out of sight. No less limited is the concept of competition, which is represented through the index of monopolization, calculated mostly through the proportion of students enrolled, beyond taking into account the peculiarities of the Russian higher education system. However, the works on competition and financing draw attention to the public good created by universities, which is not always tangible and requires the financial participation of the government. Thus, the discussions on universities’ competition and effectiveness in the context of their association with the commercial sector omit a number of socially significant elements of higher education and science.

This paper discusses the influence of local governments over the realization of «Double First-Class» project in China. Based on the qualitative analysis of 36 universities’ mid-term reports, the spillover effect on local economic and social development was found to be enhancing the core competitiveness of local governments. Text analysis of eight local governments’ «Double First-Class» implementation reports showed that the way of their promoting the «Double First-Class» construction were investment and talent introduction. The local participation in the «Double First-Class» competition under the constraint of national financial resources leads to the Matthew effect of university development. Universities selected for «Double First-Class» will get more resources and develop better, while other universities will be left behind. Therefore, the central government needs to intervene the competition of local governments.

This paper analyses the educational production function (EPF), which is one of the main economic instruments for the analysis of university activities. This instrument describes the relationship between university performance and amount of available resources and forms the basis for calculating efficiency scores. In this paper we present the results of Russian universities’ efficiency analysis, as well as the results of cluster analysis based on university efficiency and performance scores. The results of our analysis suggest that efficiency is a key characteristic of a university’s activity and should be considered as an important indicator for elaborating public policies in higher education together with making decisions when distributing resources among educational organizations.

This research article assesses the implications of using lean manufacturing for universities’ educational, scientific, financial and economic activities. The research methods include comparative analysis, trend analysis, Wilcoxon T-test, Fisher’s exact test, and correlation analysis. In retrospect, when comparing data on universities that are members of the «Association of Lean Universities», there comes to be a positive effect of lean manufacturing on the indicator «Income from all sources per one scientific and educational worker» and, in less degree, on research and development work (R&D), inflation taken into account. No statistically significant relationship between lean manufacturing and the average Unified State Examination (USE) score of the students admitted to the budgetary form of education was found. A comparative analysis of lean medical schools with their «non-lean» peers showed that lean manufacturing has a positive effect on the growth of R&D, taking inflation into account. Consequently, the use of lean manufacturing allowed universities to maintain average income growth rates per one scientific and educational worker. In addition, lean universities differ from their peers in terms of R&D amount dynamics. The study is to some extent limited by lacking quantitative information on the scale of lean manufacturing implementation, as well as by the dissimilar structure of the lean universities as such, medical schools predominating among them. The research results can be useful for university management and for the lean technologies implementation partners, who are interested in making decisions on the use of lean manufacturing.

Models of making a purchase decision, traditionally used in marketing, can also be applied to the choice of applicants (buyers) of an educational program. Decision-making process on choosing a master’s program differs from the one of admission to a bachelor’s degree, and thus demands a special study. It is necessary to «tune» the communication and marketing tools for each stage passed by a student in the decision-making process. However, the existing research lacks a systematic approach to considering the stages of making a purchase decision as far as a master’s program choice is concerned. This paper presents a master’s program purchase decision model, which reflects the dynamics and time frames of the decision-making process passing various stages from the first to the fourth year of the bachelor’s degree. The empirical basis of the study is the data of a 2019 survey of HSE one-to-four-year undergraduates specializing in different spheres. To construct the model based on the study of factors and sources of information influencing the students’ choice, there were identified the time intervals of the main stages (understanding the problem, searching for information, and alternatives evaluation) of the students’ purchasing decision process. The proposed model will allow master’s programs to improve their communication strategies, considering the characteristics of various stages, which should provide a systematic influence over a potential consumer within the decision-making process when choosing a master’s program.

The article discusses methodological approaches to measuring academic mobility when a researcher changes his place of work within the academic environment. Researchers’ academic mobility is a factor of their productivity, it provides knowledge transfer, renews scientific ideas, and in general contributes to the active development of higher education and science. However, in Russia the phenomenon of academic mobility is not studied sufficiently and demands an estimation of both mobility as a whole, and its factors, and its consequences. There are not many data sources on mobility, and getting corresponding information is often problematic – these factors make it difficult to empirically measure researchers’ academic mobility. This review might be the first step towards filling the gap in empirical research on academic mobility in Russia. The author suggests a detailed analysis of academic mobility assessment methodologies, including surveys, CVs, bibliometric and combined approaches. The article summarizes the experience of practical approaches application, identifies advantages and disadvantages of each of them, and provides their comparative analysis. The author comes to the conclusion that in the absence of a unique approach to measuring the academic mobility, the bibliometric approach, which provides large representative samplings, research results reproducibility, and greater possibilities of mobility factors assessment, best meets the goals of modern research on causality of academic mobility. This paper should help those who study science and higher education in selecting the most suitable approach to academic mobility measurement and in considering a number of nuances of each approach as practically applied in the research planning process.

The author reviews the international conference EdCrunch Tomsk 2020 on advanced learning technologies. The key idea of the conference is to identify and discuss technologies that are transforming the landscape of modern education, as well as the conditions that ensure their effectiveness when solving urgent problems of modern society at the stage of transition to an individualized, student-centered, distributed, accessible education. The review presents ideas and conclusions formulated at the conference which regard the change of the educational paradigm in the digital era. The sections of the conference focus on pedagogical design and digital pedagogy; continuing education and heutagogy; experimental educational design; futures literacy. There are considered development strategies of such advanced learning technologies as virtual and augmented reality, open educational resources, platform solutions, and adaptive technologies. Within the new opportunities for education management, based on the materials of the conference, the challenges and opportunities of higher education are discussed in the context of the pandemic and after it, as well as new technological solutions for education management and barriers to their implementation, new digital capabilities of libraries. Peculiar attention is paid to digital economy personnel training and to the sphere of artificial intelligence. The cross-cutting topics of the conference are as follows: the growth of demand for collaborations and networks in the field of education and science; lacking «soft» skills and opportunities for their formation among students within the framework of traditional education; insufficient legislation for advanced technologies application; the fundamental lack of common solutions and the need for institutions to be flexible and focused when «switching» to digital education.