The article considers the outcomes of a large scale experiment on rural school restructuring that took place in 18 of Russia.s regions. The obtained results provide convincing evidence that education centers and sociocultural complexes created in the course of the experiment have considerable advantages over traditional types of institutions. Further development of the sociocultural centers. network is hampered by the lack of a legislative base for their functioning, as well as by difficulties of co-ordination between various government bodies and different budgets.

Heyneman S.P., Anderson K.H., Nuraliyeva N. The cost of corruption in higher education // Comparative Education Review. 2007. Vol. 51. № 2. P. 1–25.
 

The article considers the typical mechanisms of corruption in the Russian education. The authors analyze the spread of societal attitudes that make this corruption possible. An educational institution is considered here as a monopoly that dictates its conditions to consumers.: parents and their children. By analyzing numerous surveys conducted among parents with different social status and from different parts of the country, the authors arrive at the conclusion that unless the situation begins to change, the country will be faced with the emergence of a caste society in which different population groups reproduce themselves and continue to drift apart from each other.

For decades, the Soviet school was a way of shaping a new cultural identity rather than an educational tool. The Archi are a small people (about 1,200) who live in one village high in the mountains of Central Daghestan. Until recently, they have retained their cultural and linguistic isolation. Interviews with the Archi recorded during field work in the village, show that the Soviet school, opened in Archib in the early thirties, had been one of the principal channels of influencing the traditional culture. The school had become the .Big Brother.s. zone in Archib, because for a long period, all teachers were from more socially advanced ethnic groups. The attitude of the Archi to their language and identity, the role of women in the society, traditional clothes, and religious life were largely affected by the school. However, being from 30 to 40 years behind the neighboring ethnoses on the way to innovations, the Archi have kept their ethic identity and their language, and now show a rare example of the successful survival of a smaller nation.

The article analyzes the varying efficiency of the same strategies and methods of development of general education systems. A review of Western practices and research conducted by the Education Development Institute of the HSE show that development mechanisms are particularly efficient in schools situated in specific reform zones. The authors call them development zones.

This article is the first in a series of two publications. It compares the efficiency of .rivaling. with that of co-operative models of competitions in education, from the viewpoint of how they correspond to the managerial expectations of the organizers The results of the research were used to develop and test a co-operative model of competitions, to be presented in the second article.

This empirical study deals with the conditions of psychological discomfort in 60 students in traumatic stress situations and with the role of defense in the overcoming of a psychological trauma. The data was elicited using the questionnaire Traumatic events and emotional conditions in stress situations, the traumatic stress questionnaire, and the Life Style Index questionnaire on defense. The data show that different defenses are of different efficiency in solving internal and external conflicts, and that their influence on the health of an individual is negative. The author discovers the role of defenses in forming and developing post-stress dysfunction.

In 2007, The Interregional Association for Education Monitoring and Statistics conducted a complex study of preschool education in Russia. It included an overview of international data, a sociological survey, and an analysis of statistics on the following topics: * Factors and conditions on enrolment of older preschool children in education programs; * Accessibility of quality pre-school education; * Balance between the demand and supply of education for older pre-school children. The survey covers 14 pilot regions, where all types of principal actors in the sphere of preschool education were polled. Both parents and educators were polled, and parents of children both attending and not attending pre-school institutions were included in the sample. 5,155 parents and 2,034 preschool educators took part in the survey.

Trends and possibilities of interregional development of education: Case of pre-school education.
In 2004.2007, experts from the Institute of Knowledge, Statistics and Economics of HSE developed an information analytical system for rating the education development in the regions of Russia. The research was contracted for by the Russian Ministry of Science and Education and the State Committee on Education. However, it is clear that the rating is only one of many possible tools in comparing regions. Therefore, in 2008, the scope of the task was broadened: based on the previous research, the authors have started forming a system for the analysis of the development of education systems in the federal subjects of Russia. Some results of the analysis are presented in this article. Work in this direction is being continued. The current task is basically to develop a system for monitoring interregional differences in the education sphere, which would include a system for the retrieval, processing, storage, analysis, and representation of data on this topic.

The transition from a Slavic-Greek-Latin school to a collegium was an important stage in the development of secular and ecclesiastic education in Russia. Basing on archive documents, the author investigates the structural evolution of the new model of an educational institution, which was extremely important for the Russian 18th century culture from the political point of view. The author analyzes the organization, particularities of funding, and curricula of the Kharkov collegium.

The article analyzes the formal speeches of foreign professors at the Kharkov university given on ceremonial occasions in the early 19th century. Not only were these .speeches. a way for the university community to communicate with the local environment, but they also constituted a means to transfer the university idea. The literature usually associates the emergence of modernized universities with Wilhelm von Humboldt and the Berlin University. However, now the thought that modern traits in European university organization dates back to an earlier period is gaining acceptance. (For the most part, these thoughts originate from the developments in some German universities in the 18th c.) Foreign professors in Russian service, foremost of all Germans, strived to convey their understanding of the essence of a university as well as teach and conduct research,. The formal speeches of certain Kharkov professors, of L.K. Jacob, among others, well exemplify the neohumanist approach to the definition of the basic traits of a university in the modern age.

The author reviews what he finds to be the best books on business education published in Russian since the beginning of the 21st century. He considers issues in development of business education system, students. and commercial firms employees. choice of business schools, their carier growth, businessmen education, and activities of commercial universities.