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Regular version of the site

Centre of Sociology of Higher Education


CONDUCTING

empirical research in the field of Russian and foreign higher education


RESEARCHING

the academic and extracurricular experience of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students


EVALUATING

the effectiveness of educational practices, technologies, and learning formats


CREATING

tools to measure academic experience and the behaviour of students and alumni


DEVELOPING

an online-education research methodology

Thematic map of our research

  • STUDENT EXPERIENCE

    We assess factors which determine students' engagement in the educational process and extracurricular activities, analyse models of student behaviour and educational trajectories, explore factors which contribute to students' psychological well-being and gender stereotypes.

  • TRANSFORMATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION AND DOCTORAL STUDENT EXPERIENCE

    We identify factors of doctoral students’ success and the effectiveness of doctoral training, audit of measures and practices to improve the quality of doctoral education, and analyse reforms of the doctoral education system.

  • UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

    We explore how Russian universities transform their campuses to increase student engagement and foster student integration into the educational environment.

  • THE QUALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION

    We examine the quality of higher education in Russian universities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and assess the effectiveness of introducing new educational quality management tools.

  • DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE LEARNING

    We assess the effectiveness of online and hybrid learning formats, take inventory of educational digital tools, and measure the level of students’ digital competencies.

Expertise and consulting in the field of education

Our research projects

Models of students' behaviour in relation to success indicators

The research is aimed at studying the behaviour of students in Russian universities within the framework of the project of the National Research University Higher School of Economics ‘Human Success and Autonomy in a Changing World.’ It has been conducted for four years and aims to formulate informed decisions to improve students' academic performance. The research covers several universities, allowing comparison of results, and contributes to the scientific understanding of students' behaviour in Russian universities.

Contact person: Ksenia Vilkova

Mirror Laboratory ‘Psychological Well-Being of Students in Russian Universities’ with Tomsk State University

We research how studying at a university affects the psychological well-being of students. We analyse the links between students’ sense of psychological comfort, their academic performance, and participation in extracurricular activities. We examine how supportive programmes can help students feel better about themselves. The goal is to understand how to best improve students' psychological well-being during their studies.

Contact person: Elena Gorbunova

Master's programme research

We conduct a comprehensive analysis of master's programmes and compile a socio-demographic portrait of current master's students. We explore their motivation for enrolling in graduate programmes and determine the competencies required by graduates in today's labour market. We manage the product campaign ‘Development and testing of the intra-university model of master’s degree analysis’, with which we map out managerial decisions and available data. This allows us to make optimal choices and test them within the framework of a master's programme.

Contact person: Anna Korchak


The role of gender stereotypes in the career choice of females in engineering and technology programmes

We study the relationship between gender stereotypes and females' choice of engineering and technology courses. The results of the study can be used to develop policy measures and interventions needed in the field of sustainable social development policy. RSF Grant No. 22-28-00882.

Contact person: Natalia Maloshonok

Transformations of doctoral education and doctoral student experience

We explore the factors contributing to the success of doctoral students at multiple levels, including national, institutional, and individual. We analyse the quality of supervision, academic support practices, admission and selection procedures, and other aspects of doctoral training through surveys and interviews. Based on our findings, we develop recommendations for doctoral programmes and provide advice on supporting doctoral students and early-career scientists, as well as offer guidance on development of student involvement in research and science.

Contact person: Svetlana Zhuchkova

Applied projects

Monitoring the progress of graduates in achieving their goals in continuing education programmes and courses in IT-related fields

Measuring the quality of educational products in the field of education technology (EdTech). For this purpose, we offer a tool for assessing the share of graduates who have achieved the goals set at the beginning or in the course of their education. We have completed projects for the largest EdTech market players, such as Skillbox, Netology, and Yandex Practicum. Read more about our methodology and results in public reports.

Contact persons: Elena Tarasova, Evgenia Shmeleva

Team

Ivan Gruzdev

Director

Research interests: sociology of education, relational sociology, higher education

Ksenia Vilkova

Deputy Director of the Centre, research fellow

Research interests: student experience, gender stereotypes, interventions in education, digital technologies in education

Natalia Maloshonok

Senior research fellow

Research interests: student engagement, student experience, educational achievement factors, student academic fraud, doctoral studies, online survey methodology

Evgeniy Terentev

Senior research fellow

Research interests: doctorate and research training, online research methodology, academic profession

Svetlana Zhuchkova

Research fellow

Research interests: doctorate and research training, gender studies, data analysis

Evgeniia Shmeleva

Research fellow

Research interests: academic fraud of students, EdTech, quantitative methods of data analysis

Oksana Dremova

Junior research fellow

Research interests: sociology of education, comparative analysis of higher education systems, academic fraud, key competencies of the 21st century

Irina Shcheglova

Junior research fellow

Research interests: student experience, student achievement, university campus, international education, comparative studies

Nikita Smirnov

Junior research fellow

Research interests: doctoral research, educational content, sociology of science, natural language processing

Olga Golovina

Scientific and Educational Projects Support Department: Head of Department

Anna Korchak

Research assistant

Research interests: master's education, quality of education, online master's programmes

Elena Tarasova

Research Assistant

Research interests: sociology of education, inequality in education, factors of educational achievement, quantitative and qualitative data analysis in social sciences, EdTech

Ekaterina Mayukova

Research Assistant

Research interests: success of Olympiad winners, student behaviour, inequality in education

Anna Lulikyan

Research Assistant

Research interests: sociology of higher education, Russian doctorate, empirical studies of law, sociology of lethal violence

Danila Pavliuk

Research assistant

Research interests: efficiency of graduate school admissions, Russian doctorate, interaction within digital communities

Ekaterina Stolbova

Research assistant

Research interests: formation of universal competencies in students, friendly (inclusive) educational environment in higher education

Sofya Kokoreva

Research assistant

Research interests: social history, memorial culture, sociology of education

Nikolay Rakov

Research assistant

Research interests: sociology of science and education, sociological theory, interpretative sociology, instrumentalization of phenomenology, qualitative methodology

Lev Ivanov

Research assistant

Jennet Babayeva

Research assistant

Research interests: financial support for doctoral students, motivation of graduate students, research impact, higher education, qualitative research methods

Publications

  • Book

    Alcott B., CohenMiller A., Sandygulova A. et al.

    Gender Equity in STEM in Higher Education: International Perspectives on Policy, Institutional Culture, and Individual Choice

    This timely volume brings together a range of international scholars to analyse cultural, political, and individual factors which contribute to the continued global issue of female underrepresentation in STEM study and careers. 

    Offering a comparative approach to examining gender equity in STEM fields across countries including the UK, Germany, the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Africa, and China, the volume provides a thematic breakdown of institutional trends and national policies that have successfully improved gender equity in STEM at institutions of higher education. Offering case studies that demonstrate how policies interact with changing social and cultural norms, and impact women’s choices and experiences in relation to the uptake and continuation of STEM study at the undergraduate level, the volume highlights new directions for research and policy to promote gender equity in STEM at school, university, and career levels. 

    Contributing to the United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in science education, higher education, and gender equity in STEM fields. The text will also support further discussion and reflection around multicultural education, educational policy and politics, and the sociology of education more broadly.

    NY: Routledge, 2022.

  • Article

    Zhang H., Costley J., Courtney M. et al.

    The impact of different peer feedback types on student academic writing performance from dyadic and individual analyses

    Depending on the nature of comments made during peer review of academic writing, students may be able to evaluate and revise their performance. Therefore, it is essential to explore how the content of comments affects student writing. Since peer review is a process of interaction, it is critical to understand how comments affect student academic writing performance at both group and individual levels. This study examined online peer review of 68 master’s and doctoral students in the scientific writing course who divided themselves into dyads. The study evaluated the effect of different feedback categories on the writing scores of five different sections of a scientific research manuscript. Comments can be broadly categorised as elaboration, verification, and general. Their focus can be further divided into abstract general, criteria general, criteria specific, and language. The results revealed that different types of feedback affected dyadic and individual writing performance in similar ways. Verification feedback had a more pronounced effect on student writing performance than elaboration and general types of feedback. The findings also suggested that verification feedback had different effects on writing in different manuscript sections.For example, an increase in the frequency of verification feedback was associated with improved scores on the abstract, but decreased scores on the results section.

    Education and Information Technologies. 2024.

  • Book chapter

    Aleksei Egorov, Sergey Malinovskiy.

    Higher education and regional elite formation in Russia

    Massification of higher education system may have changed significantly the roles of different types of universities in elite class formation. While the educational background of political elites in general has been widely studied, some questions have been left on the periphery. First, social sciences focus mostly on the political elite at the centres of power, with regional elites receiving little attention. Second, the analysis of political elites usually does not take into account the transformations of the higher education system – stratification of the sector, the differences between elite and mass segments, changes in the dominant fields of studies – and how these might intersect with elite formation. This chapter aims at addressing the above limitations. It focuses on the Russian regional political legislative elites. We analyse changes in their educational background and connect those changes to transformations in the higher education systems and larger society. 

    In bk.: Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education: Knowledge for a Disordered World. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023. Ch. 14. P. 286-299.

  • Working paper

    Валединский П. И., Ivaniushina V. A., Alexandrov D. A. et al.

    Factors Influencing Adolescent Alcohol Consumption: Parents And Depression

    Alcohol use is a common form of risky consumption among adolescents. Little research has been carried out on the influence of such factors as parental control, relationships with parents, and teenage feelings of depression on the frequency of alcohol consumption among adolescents in Russia. In this paper, structural models were developed to describe the influence of these factors on adolescent alcohol consumption and the relationship between the factors. Alcohol consumption in adolescents is represented in the work in two ways: casual alcohol use and binge drinking (the consumption of four or more servings of alcohol at a time). The respondents were students at vocational schools who participated in a longitudinal project to study the risky behavior of adolescents in St. Petersburg. Four waves of the survey were used: 1, 5, 6 & 7. According to the results, the strongest direct negative effect on alcohol consumption is caused by parental monitoring. However, the direct influence of monitoring on adolescent alcohol consumption was significant in Wave 1. But in Wave 6, this influence was insignificant, which can partially be explained by the age of the respondents, most of whom were already adults at the moment of completing the questionnaire in Wave 6. Regarding the relationship with parents, no direct influence on alcohol consumption was detected—only an indirect effect mediated by parental monitoring. The positive correlation between the relationship with parents and the level of monitoring was significant in Waves 1 and 7. The level of depression in adolescents was a significant predictor of drinking behavior only in the model describing alcohol consumption as the frequency of casual drinking. In the models describing binge drinking, this relationship was insignificant. In all models, there was a stable negative relationship between the relationship with parents and depression in adolescents.

    Sociology. SOC. Высшая школа экономики, 2023. No. 101.

All publications