The article deals with basic specific institutional features of professional training in coordinated and liberal economies. The author thinks that the specifics of labor market institutes have become one of the basic factors that shape models of professional training. One of the principle directions of evaluation of these models is checking whether they are up to challenges of the modern economy. The mechanisms of providing of education services in various countries is primarily determined by the choice of funding sources, the ratio between general and specialized knowledge, and specifics of the knowledge certification systems. 

The article presents first results of the Monitoring of educational and labor trajectories of high school and university graduates. This project has been launched by HSE in 2009. The research group has conducted surveys among university students in their last year studies in two regions of Russia. The purpose has been to determine individual indicators that would best predict changes in the educational and professional trajectory. There have been determined groups of students for whom the probability to change career after the graduation is particularly high. The article discusses the significance of the chosen independent variables as concerns the two main reasons for a trajectory change: lack of certainty in the professional career in the last year of studies and low academic achievements of students. The future possibilities of the launched study are discussed. 

The article argues for a new technology in teaching students of state and municipal management. The method is based on direct observation and description of management practices by students who lack any systematic research skills (the «naive observer» method). The authors ague that the use of this method allows to solve two types of problem at once: a pedagogical one and a scientific one. Students observe, and provide a description of, facts of the Russian provincial life without any interpretation whatsoever, which allows to obtain a picture of the social life that is closer to the reality than the one obtained by use of interpretational schemes of sociologists and journalists. It is only the latter picture that is currently used by the authorities as a basis for management decisions and for developing projects of social changes.

Cultural differences between the business community and the academia, the two major spheres of modern public life, are under scrutiny in this paper. In particular, specifics of their transformations under conditions of knowledge economy are addressed. A number of expert focused interviews have been conducted, in which the multilayer causal analysis method has been applied in order to find out which barriers prevent constructive dialogue between the science community and the business, as well as demands of these two society sectors to each other. The author formulates principles of interaction for representatives of academia and business in profit making innovation projects.

The necessity to introduce computers at schools is dictated by objective social processes. In order to introduce computer enhanced teaching practices and to preserve their leading role in the process of teaching, a teacher must combine a high level of pedagogical skills with thorough mastery of information technologies. The education modern teachers should include the inoculation of the following skills: an ability to quickly and objectively evaluate digital teaching resources, an ability to plan and schedule a class that uses computer and information technologies, and to create interactive learning environment. 

The article presents the results of a monitoring of the academic level of the students who got admitted to universities in the summer of 2010. The authors estimate the average Unified State Examination grade of those who got admitted via competition of their USE grades. The data thus obtained are used to analyze the tendencies in the development of the higher education system. Specifically, the following questions are addressed: which programs are most on the demand, which university get the best prepared students, what is the breakdown of preferences of olympiad winners across universities, who are entitled to be admitted bypassing the competition, and what are specific features of the admission at universities that have received state support.

Presented is a flow chart of students in the Russian education system in 2008. Shown are the flows between the main education levels as well as between the education system and the labor market. The chart can serve as a useful tool in analyzing the structure of demand for specific education levels and of education trajectories, as well as for estimating the funding needs of education system. The author provides a detailed analysis of the sources used to develop the chart, including a discussion of their specific features and limitations.

Introduction to the discussion "Mediafaculty of the future".

The Institute of culture history in Moscow has opened a Center for media studies, whose puprose is to intensify the scientific exchange between Russian and Europen experts on media education. The first session took place on September 22 and 23, 2010. The topics discussed there included university training of experts on mass media according to the demands of the field, perspectives of participation in the Bologna process, and publishing specialized literature on theory and sociology of communications.

The emergence of the Soviet university system is considered in the light of language practices that reproduced and maintained it. It is claimed that the nucleus of these practices is constituted by the discourses of military mobilization and of planning. These types of discourse show considerable stability during 1920s and 1930s. The article widely uses unpublished materials from the MSU Archive and publications of the period.

In memoriam.

Judt Tony. New Meritocrats // York Review of Books. 2010. 19 August.

Compagnon Antoine. Leçons américaines // Revue mensuelle «Le Débat». 2009. No. 156. P. 99–116.

The Singapore education system was created nearly from the scratch, and in the last 45 years it managed to reach a high level of efficiency and international recognition. Singapore school students routinely show the best results in international knowledge tests. Singapore has left behind developed countries in the quality of the education institution development, its educational infrastructure is compact and well integrated into the overall economic structure. The article summarizes the findings of a working visit of a group of senior education managers from Tatarstan to Singapore. It lays out the main stages of development of the education system in this country. A particular emphasis is given to the specifics of the administrative work and education management.

Introduction of new technologies into production process has provoked various changes on the labor market: creation and demand increase for one professions and destruction of another jobs. Such situation issues the challenges for the education system in a whole and for professional education in particular. The paper looks how foreign countries solved problems concerning creation of applied programs of professional education, reasons the necessity for introduction of similar programs in Russian practice and analyzes possible options for its introduction.

Since early 1990s, Kazakhstan reforms the higher education. The main direction of the reform are similar to those in Russia: introduction of a unified testing system for admission to universities, aggregation of universities, partial transfer of education functions to private institutions, reduction of state supported student vacancies at state universities, and introduction of education credits. These transformations have been almost finished in this country. The experience and the results might be interesting and useful for Russia as well. 

The situation with the professional training and labor market in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan is rather similar to that in other regions of Russia. The article considers the measures taken in these regions in order to coordinate the professional training system with demands of the labor market. These measures include the creation of systemic educational complexes, innovation centers, and an increase in inventory of programs at professional training institutions.

The article describes results of a study of organizational culture in a number of leading Russian and American universities. It is shown in which way the organizational culture affects the activities of a university, and how it can be improved in order to benefit the activities.

The article suggest a break up of the development of the project methods into consecutive stages, and analyzes the emergence of the method in national and foreign teaching practices.

The book authored by an outstanding pianist and teacher, a doctor of arts, is regarded by the reviewer as a guide in life, rather than just a textbook on music.