Book chapter
Stratification by the state and the market: High participation higher education in Russia
In book

The main reason the so-called "crisis of education" covers not only the rap-id changes in the system of knowledge and technology, but also the changes in the labor market, the prevalence of atypical employment. As a result, the univer-sity, by definition, can not train a specialist, fully satisfying the requirements of the employer. For example, the direction of "Advertising and public relations" proposes measures to resolve the existing contradictions.
Bridging the gap between higher education research and policy making was always a challenge, but the recent calls for more evidence-based policies have opened a window of unprecedented opportunity for researchers to bring more contributions to shaping the future of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Encouraged by the success of the 2011 first edition, Romania and Armenia have organised a 2nd edition of the Future of Higher Education – Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference (FOHE-BPRC) in November 2014, with the support of the Italian Presidency of the European Union and as part of the official EHEA agenda. Reuniting over 170 researchers from more than 30 countries, the event was a forum to debate the trends and challenges faced by higher education today and look at the future of European cooperation in higher education. The research volumes offer unique insights regarding the state of affairs of European higher education and research, as well as forward-looking policy proposals. More than 50 articles focus on essential themes in higher education: Internationalization of higher education; Financing and governance; Excellence and the diversification of missions; Teaching, learning and student engagement; Equity and the social dimension of higher education; Education, research and innovation; Quality assurance, The impacts of the Bologna Process on the EHEA and beyond and Evidence-based policies in higher education.
This book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of inequality and the stratification of the digital sphere.
Grounded in classical sociological theories of inequality, as well as empirical evidence, this book defines ‘the digital divide’ as the unequal access and utility of internet communications technologies and explores how it has the potential to replicate existing social inequalities, as well as create new forms of stratification. The Digital Divide examines how various demographic and socio-economic factors including income, education, age and gender, as well as infrastructure, products and services affect how the internet is used and accessed. Comprised of six parts, the first section examines theories of the digital divide, and then looks in turn at:
Highly developed nations and regions (including the USA, the EU and Japan); Emerging large powers (Brazil, China, India, Russia); Eastern European countries (Estonia, Romania, Serbia); Arab and Middle Eastern nations (Egypt, Iran, Israel); Under-studied areas (East and Central Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa).Providing an interwoven analysis of the international inequalities in internet usage and access, this important work offers a comprehensive approach to studying the digital divide around the globe. It is an important resource for academic and students in sociology, social policy, communication studies, media studies and all those interested in the questions and issues around social inequality.
This article addresses the questions, What do children in urban areas do on Saturdays? What type of organizational resources do they have access to? Does this vary by social class? Using diary data on children’s activities on Saturdays in the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metropolitan area, the authors describe the different types of venues (households, businesses, public space, associations, charities, congregations, and government/tribal agencies) that served different types of children. They find that the likelihood of using a charity or business rather than a government or tribal provider increased with family income. Also, the likelihood of using a congregation or a government facility rather than business, charity, or household increased with being Hispanic. The authors discuss implications for the urban division of labor on Saturdays and offer research questions that need further investigation.
In this paper, we discuss the methods of endowment management existing in the world and their applicability to the Russian university system. The endowment spending research focuses on the following issues: reinvesting endowment income; identifying the size of expendable endowment income; using the endowment body, not onlyincome; choosing endowment spending policy, rule and rate endowments, etc. We provide an overview of endowment fund financial indicators and endowment spending allocationin Russia. Based on the example of the HSE Endowment Fund, we analyze the use of endowment spending rulesand model of financial indicators for 2008–2014. The University’s Endowment Fund endowment spending policies implement the preservation principle, which may be reasonable in a stable economy. However, the viability of the principle is questionable in the crisis, the more so since the endowment is mostly in rubles. Using net asset valuation methods, the HSE Endowment Fund could provide equity betweengenerations with annual distribution of income in favor of the next and current generations.
As a matter of great importance the information and communication technologies (ICT) development are searched in this paper. Indicators using for measuring and fostering progress in this area are widely used in ranking countries last decade. But the development of the country’s regions needs attention as well; especially it concerns such a large country as Russia. The heterogeneity of its regional structure is shown. As an classification criterion the innovative development is proposed. Using advanced statistical parametrical and non-parametrical methods allows defining the stratification of regions. The level of ICT development in groups (strata) of regions has been compared.