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Student evaluation of teaching (SET) has more than forty years of history as a tool of feedback in North American, Australian and European universities. In Russian universities it is not widespread, although increasing its implementation could solve the problem of Russian students feeling that they are not involved in the management of the educational process and improve the quality of courses and teaching. The barriers to the implementation of SET in the Russian higher education system, among other things, are concerns and prejudices of teachers and students, who see SET more as a problem than an effective tool. In this article, authors analyze the most common faculty concerns about student evaluations of teaching, obtained from ten focus groups in five Russian universities. Authors put collected opinions in the context of the recent methodological discussions about the validity of Student Evaluations of Teaching. The main idea is that SET is an effective tool of getting feedback in higher education and involvement of students and teachers in a dialogue and cooperation in the educational process, but highly questionable as a data source for administrative decisions.

The purpose of this article is to determine the potential for constructive social change that can reach the communities of technology enthusiasts in Russian universities, and to identify possible directions for such changes. University communities of technology enthusiasts and the sites where they work are chosen as the object of research: fab labs, CMITs, circles. The basic conceptual framework of the research is the theory of fields, which asserts that society is a system of embedded social fields. Social changes in this theory are referred to as the transformation of existing social fields or the emergence of new ones. The term “practice of the future” is first introduced, and understood as a group of people united by common interests in advanced technological and social solutions sharing common activities and knowledge (sharing), but not included in a sustainable social field. The hypothesis of the present study is that communities of practice of the future have the capacity for social change and the directions of such changes can be identified through the analysis of strategies that are consistently applied in these communities. The semi-structured in-depth interviews of leaders and participants of university student technological centers are used as the material for the study. The article concludes that the two most obvious social fields in which communities of technology enthusiasts of Russian universities are capable of producing changes are the field of technological entrepreneurship and the field of educational innovation. In the first of these fields, the strategies of technology enthusiasts (initiative, project orientation, diversity and meritocracy) give advantages over players who do not employ these strategies. In the second field (educational innovation) these strategies can give the direction of changes, bringing together enthusiasts of relevant educational technologies. Social changes of the techno-optimistic type generated by the university communities of technology enthusiasts is not yet directed to a specific social field. However, examples of large-scale country-wide projects show that such a field is beginning to form. It is quite possible that modern university communities of technology enthusiasts are able to generate a social field no less powerful than their predecessors – the movement of technological kruzhoks – at the begining of the 20th century.

The purpose of this study is to describe the strategies of interaction with alumni and suggest directions for their inclusion in the managerial arsenal of the central administration of the university. The Far Eastern Federal University, relatively recently created on the basis of four independent universities, three of which were strongly industry-oriented, provides rich material for research on strategies of interaction with alumni that have developed in its various structural divisions. At the same time, most of these strategies are not initiated by the central administration, and the biggest part of them even is out of its view. Strategies for interaction with alumni arise as forms of reproduction, increment and conversion of the social capital of alumni, leaders of the academic community and several departments of the university. The university appears to researchers as a kind of “exchange office”, in which there is a constant movement of different types of capital, the main of which is social and its subspecies – alumni capital.

The article presents a sociological view on the current problems of the scientific and pedagogical community (SPC) of universities participating in the strategic academic leadership program «Priority-2030». The main attention is paid to the characteristics of the trends in the development of the SPC, its contradictions and the possibilities of overcoming them. A special place is given to the sociological analysis of university management as a factor of scientific productivity of the SPC. The interaction of the SPC and university management is considered in the context of the goals of the Priority- 2030 program. The necessity of developing and implementation new principles of human capital management of SPC into university practices is substantiated. Among them are a differentiated approach to assessing the scientific activity of individual groups of SPCs; flexible restructuring of the main types of their professional activities; ensuring the high status of SPCs demonstrating major scientific achievements; overcoming anomalies and imitations in the activities of SPCs. The empirical basis of the article is the results of interviews with representatives of the SPC, analysis of documents, statistical data reflecting the development of Russian higher education in the XXI century.

Universities in Russia are experiencing a dynamic transformation of scientific and educational processes, their structures, and management systems. These changes occur at different rates and levels of transformation; they allow for both positive and negative transformation scenarios. A general trend to develop university’s management systems in the country – as well as in the whole world – lies in the managerialization, which poses risks for transforming a university. Following Mintzberg’s methodology for analyzing organizational systems and Taleb’s concept of “black swans”, the paper aimed to analyze degradation scenarios for developing university’s management systems and identify factors and conditions for these scenarios and their consequences for universities.

The article examines the development of personnel policy and human resource management (HRM) in Russian universities under the influence of the Project 5-100. Globalization has intensified the processes of universities corporatization and the spread of effective management practices. National academic excellence programs have contributed to strengthening the performance-based governance in universities all over the world. These factors had deeply influenced the transformation of HRM practices at universities. Russian studies in this field are shown as fragmented, focusing on narrow aspects, and not forming a holistic picture of the HRM system transformation in Russian universities. This work aims to describe a holistic case of personnel policy and HRM system development in one of the leading Russian universities – the National Research Nuclear University “MEPhI” (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute).The research applied the method of semi-formalized interviews and covered 25 employees of MEPhI. Four interview guides were developed for different categories of employees (top management, middle management, academics, teachers), including more than 25 questions, focusing on employees’ perception of different components of the HRM system at the university. The study showed that the HRM system at MEPhI was significantly transformed under the influence of the Project 5-100: the personnel policy was formalized in high-level strategic documents; the processes of recruitment and selection of foreign employees have been rebuilt; the considerable increase in the number of foreign employees was reached; global partners began to play an important role; a comfortable environment for the implementation of initiatives was created and opportunities for professional development were provided. A significant part of these changes is connected, directly or indirectly, with the university’s participation in the Project 5-100. In general, this points to its positive impact on personnel policy and the HRM system at the university. The results obtained can be used as a basis for formulating recommendations for improving the personnel policy and HRM system in Russian universities as an important component of the management system as a whole.

The review article summarizes the results of foreign and Russian studies of imitations in higher education and the understanding of their causes and consequences. The first section is devoted to the results of the analysis of university management imitations caused by the bureaucratization of the higher education management system and critical gaps between its strategic objectives and resource deficits. The second section examines the research strategies of the scientific and pedagogical community, which have a forced imitation character. The third section deals with the generalization of the experience of studying students’ imitation practices in a wide range – from academic fraud to the consumption of educational symbols. The end-to-end lines of analysis of the research results of the problem are imitations in the educational and scientific activities of universities, as well as in the “zones” of interaction of educational communities, in which they are mutually conditioned.

The review article summarizes the processes of development of higher education sociology abroad over the past 50 years. The choice of the research object was determined by the real achievements of national higher education systems and a high level of higher school sociology development in USA, Great Britain, France, Scandinavian countries, and Spain. The review reflects the advancement of leading sociologists of higher education in these countries. The authors have applied a methodology of comparative analysis studying the Western experience of sociological research in higher education, the main ideas and trends. The article dwells on the ways of changes in the content field of Western sociology of higher education. The practical significance of the review is determined by the possibilities of using the proposed analysis for the development of Russian sociology of higher education and University development practices.

The article focuses on the main trends in the development of modern Russian education. The authors reveal some of its sore points, show the possibilities to overcome them. Some positive examples of the leading universities of the country confirm the high importance of modern University centers of learning, science and culture in the formation of a competence-oriented national educational cluster of innovative type. The authors come to a conclusion that Russian universities, taking into account the existing motivation and the targeted state support provided for them, are able to become quite competitive, to join the ranks of the world top universities, to be attractive not only for Russian but also foreign students. The authors make the case for the the competitiveness growth of the leading universities, argue that the increase of their competitive advantages can become one of the drivers of the development of Russian higher education and the country’s economy as a whole.

At present time, many of the Russian foremost higher educational institutions acquire some typical features of the third generation universities [1]. Their indispensable adaptation to the new conditions gives rise to some significant transformations of own structure. The need to develop forestall education for promoters of fast emerging multidisciplinary technologies leads to melting and separating the university divisions and also to establishing interdepartmental teams. The universities serve as centers of network interaction with partners and business enterprises. Intensive interpenetration of project and administrative management forms becomes typical. Arising therefore painful changes in the roles of particular teams and their key members are to be alleviated due to proper management style. The influence of such collectively adopted documents as the university Mission and Strategy increases significantly. The paper dwells on the specific characteristics of arising management problems closely connected with the development ofmultidisciplinary forestall education in the area of biomedicine and biotechnologies at the Nizhni Novgorod Lobachevsky State University. The author stresses that at the contemporary stage the university acquires the features of an open system (in Prigogine's interpretation).

The article discusses the effectiveness of the system of university internal management providing the interaction of two structural units of an educational institution - chairs and managerial staff. This system is characterized by the internal contradictions decreasing its effectiveness. These contradictions are due to the conflict of interest between two main groups of workers. The author analyzes the causes, forms and the negative consequences of this conflict. The paper gives recommendations aimed at the prevention of such negative phenomena in the practice of University management through the use of complex methods of administrative, economic and psychological character.

Higher education modernization that takes place in the country makes many lecturers from the provinces think that their education institutions somehow fall out of the strategy of national education development. However at the time being regional higher education institution has almost infinite opportunities to develop and improve its educational activities.There is a need for regional higher education institutions to get restructured and turn into scientific and innovative university complexes for successful establishment and effective functioning. An additional point is that university must have its own distinctive feature that will serve as its brand and will make it possible to differentiate it from other universities of the region. These components will ensure a high scientific and educational level as well as integrated training of human resources in order to prepare them for innovative activities and involve the university into an active social and economical development of the region.