Simon Marginson - Professor of Higher Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK. Address: UCL Institute of Education, University College London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, United Kingdom. E-mail: s.marginson@ucl.ac.uk

The public/private distinction is central to higher education but there is no consensus on the meaning of ‘public’. Two different meanings are in use. Economic theory distinguishes non market goods (public) that cannot be produced for profit, from market-based activity (private). This provides a basis for identifying the minimum necessary public expenditure, but does not effectively encompass collective goods. In political theory ‘public’ is often understood as state ownership and/ or control. This is more inclusive than the  economic definition, and recognizes the scope for norms and policies, but lacks clear boundaries. The first part of the article synthesizes these two approaches, developing an analytical framework with four quadrants (civil society, social democracy, state quasi-market,  commercial market) that can be used to categorise activities in higher education and research. The second part summarises the findings of 30 semi-structured interviews in the Russian government and two universities, conducted in 2013, concerning perceptions of public goods produced in Russian higher education. While most interviewees saw research as a global public good, they were divided in relation to teaching and learning. Some understood the education function as a public good in both the economic and political  sense and wanted the government to take greater responsibility for improvement in higher education. Others saw higher education as a private good in the economic sense, and while they acknowledged the need for government because of market failure, wanted  public intervention and regulation to be reduced. This division in thought about public/private paralleled the larger division between Soviet and neoliberal thinking in the Russian polity, and also the divided character of higher education, which is evenly split between free  government administered places and a fee-paying student market.

Elena Chernova - Doctor of Sciences in Economics, Professor, Senior Vice-Rector for Economics, St. Petersburg State University. E-mail: e.chernova@spbu.ru

Tite Akhobadze - Candidate of Sciences in Economics, Deputy Head of the Planning and Finance Department, St. Petersburg State University. E-mail: t.akhobadze@spbu.ru

Aleksandra Malova - Candidate of Sciences in Economics, Associate Professor, Department of Economic Cybernetics, St. Petersburg State University. E-mail: a.malova@spbu.ru

Andrey Saltan - Candidate of Sciences in Economics, Assistant Professor, Department of Information Systems in Economics, St. Petersburg State University. E-mail: a.saltan@spbu.ru

Address: 7–9 Universitetskaya Emb., 199034 St. Petersburg, Russian Federation.

World Bank data shows that education accounts for, on average, 13% of government expenditure in the world, effective spending being a priority. Position in international academic rankings has been a universally accepted, yet criticized, criterion of institutional effectiveness. No consistent positive correlation was revealed during research on how the size of government subsidies affected university ranking. Assessment methodology is adjusted to study the influence of public funding mechanisms on university ranking. Three mechanisms are investigated: formula based funding, performance based funding, and negotiated funding. The sample includes 107 European universities from 27 countries. For each of them, information on the funding model (or a combination of models), total annual revenue, proportion of public subsidies, ranking and ranking movements over the last decade is collected. Analysis results are used to group universities into two major categories: low-ranking universities (ranked in the top 200–500), which are mostly funded using formal mechanisms (formula- and performance based funding), and high-rankings universities (the top 100), which largely use the negotiated funding model (either alone or combined with formal models). This confirms previous research findings that the size of government subsidies has no impact on university ranking. A qualitative analysis of higher education funding patterns in Russia is performed. Formalization of all sources of university funding has become a major trend, yet this empirical study demonstrates that prioritization of formal criteria may be ineffective if Russian universities want to reach their ambitious goals of making it to the top 100 in international rankings.

Alexey Bessudnov - DPhil, Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter (United Kingdom).
Address: Amory Building 341, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ UK. E-mail: a.bessudnov@exeter.ac.uk

Dmitry Kurakin - Candidate of Sciences (Sociology), Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology and Anthropology of Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Address: 20 Myasnitskaya St., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: dukurakin@hse.ru

Valeriya Malik - Leading Expert, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Address: 20 Myasnitskaya St., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: vmalik@hse.ru

It is widely believed that higher education in Russia has become almost universal and more people go to universities compared to most European countries. In this paper we explore this issue empirically with the Russian and European census data and data from the Trajectories in Education and Careers (TREC), a longitudinal cohort study. According to the 2010 census, only 34% of people aged between 25 and 34 in Russia have university degrees, which is nearly the same as in most Eastern European countries and slightly fewer than in Western Europe. The TREC data show that only about 50% of 2012 ninthgrade graduates were university students in 2015. The expansion of higher education in Russia has been in line with the overall European trends. Similar to other countries, there have been changes to the gender composition of university students in Russia over the last two decades, with girls being more likely to attend university than boys. The analysis of social backgrounds of students with different educational trajectories reveals a  onsiderable social inequality within the Russian education system. Eighty-four percent of school graduates with university-educated parents are admitted to university, as compared to only 32% of children from less-educated families. Graduation from ninth grade represents an educational fork that is crucial for inequality, as children from less socially advantaged families tend to opt for vocational education at this stage. Graduation from eleventh grade is a less important educational transition: at least 80% of high school students get admitted to university after graduating from 11th grade.

Filipp Kazin - Candidate of Sciences (History), Dean, Technological Management and Innovation Faculty, ITMO University. Address: 11/2 Chaikovsky St., 191187 Saint Petersburg, Russan Federation. E-mail:kazin@corp.ifmo.ru

Stephen Hagen - Professor Emeritus of the University of South Wales (UK). Address: University of South Wales, Pontypridd, Wales, CF37 1DL. E-mail:stephenhagenprof@ gmail.com

Аnastasiya Prichislenko - Head of Personal Development Center, Technological Management and Innovation Faculty, ITMO University. Address: 11/2 Chaikovsky St., 191187 Saint Petersburg, Russan Federation. E-mail:aprichislenko@gmail.com

Andrey Zlenko - Director of Center for Community Projects and Social Entrepreneurship, Technological Management and Innovation Faculty, ITMO University. Address: 11/2 Chaikovsky St., 191187 Saint Petersburg, Russan Federation. E-mail: anikspb@mail.ru

This article provides an empirically-based insight into the operation and impact of socially-oriented entrepreneurship as an educational tool at the Russian higher education institution, ITMO University (St Petersburg). The experience suggests that consciously placing stress on the social and ethical dimension of entrepreneurship education provides a strong motivational factor which develops many students’ interests towards contributing positively to society. The effective engagement of students in community projects creates a synergy between the project’s practical objectives, students’ awareness of self, and helps to refine the students’ own life goals and values -invaluable for setting a career strategy.

Irina Abramova - Doctor of Sciences (Philology), Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages for Humanities, Petrozavodsk State University. E-mail: olesya@petrsu.ru

Elena Shishmolina - Candidate of Sciences (Pedagogy), Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages for Humanities, Petrozavodsk State University. E-mail: elena.shishmolina@yandex.ru

Address: 33 Lenina Ave, 185910 Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, Russian Federation

A multi-year empirical study (2008–2017) tests a new model of teaching English to non-linguistic students in bilingual classrooms, typical of local colleges in Russia. This model comes in response to the academic community’s dissatisfaction with the outcomes of such education. The article consists of two parts. The first provides a brief analysis of cooperating extra-linguistic factors that exert a multidirectional influence on the English learning process of adults in small study groups in the classroom, provided that they are taught by a non-native speaker using standard teaching techniques. The second part of the article describes a foreign-language environment within the unified learning environment of a non-linguistic college. The model developers sought not only to reduce the negative effects of external environment and increase the positive ones but also to encourage non-linguistic students to learn English through academic and professional discourse socialization in the foreign-language environment. Principles of constructing a unified foreign-language  environment model and providing an integrated English proficiency assessment system are suggested. Preliminary model testing results are analyzed, and the key advantages of this teaching model, which allow for enhancing not only the motivation of non-linguistic students for learning English but also their levels of proficiency, are identified.

Galina Cherednichenko - Doctor of Sciences (Sociology), Leading Researcher, Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of Russian Academy of Sciences. Address: 24/35 Krzhizhanovskogo St., 117218 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: galcher50@mail.ru

Official statistics from 1995–2016 are used to describe the dynamics of youth obtaining each subsequent level of education, from middle school to college. The following chronological changes are analyzed with regard to the size of different age cohorts: changes in the number of middle and high school graduates (full-time programs) and their distribution among further educational trajectories; changes in the number of entrants to secondary vocational education, separately for skilled and mid-ranking worker programs, and their distribution between the modes of study as well as among the levels of competencies at the admission stage; changes in the number of entrants to full- and part-time higher education programs and their levels of competencies separately for each of the two modes of study. The Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey data is used to analyze the changes of 1995, 2005 and 2015 in the dynamics of the distribution of youth cohorts (ages 20–24 and 25–29) among the levels of education obtained. Academic achievement and mobility between educational trajectories are also discussed.

Daniil Alexandrov - Candidate of Sciences in Biology; Head of the Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg). E-mail: dalexandrov@hse.ru

Valeria Ivaniushina - Candidate of Sciences in Biology; Leading Research Fellow of the Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg). E-mail: ivaniushina@hse.ru

Dmitry Simanovsky - Post-Graduate Student, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg). E-mail: simanogi@gmail.com

Address: 16 Soyuza Pechatnikov St., 190121 St. Petersburg, Russian Federation.

The authors examine the digital divides of the first and second levels and analyze the use of educational resources by Russian schoolchildren. Several specialized educational resources for schoolchildren are described. The first level digital divide is understood as unequal access to the Internet among different social groups; the second level digital divide means the differences in the practices of using the Internet. Empirically the study is based on two surveys of schoolchildren, conducted in 2014–2016 in St. Petersburg (94 schools, 3,739 pupils of the 10th–11th grades) and the Kaluga region (249 schools, 27,904 pupils of the 6th–9th grades). The results show no evidence of the first level digital divide in the megalopolis. In the Kaluga region, the differences in access to the Internet are due to the type of settlement (city-village), the family structure (two-parent/single-parent families), and the parental educational level. Schoolchildren living in a village with a less educated single-parent are in the most vulnerable position. No differences in Internet use were found between schoolchildren regardless of their family background, school type, or type of settlement, neither in the Kaluga region, nor in St. Petersburg. Most schoolchildren use educational resources, and the intensity of use increases with age. The most popular general purpose resource is Wikipedia; the most popular specialized resource for schoolchildren is Znanija.com. Only a small percentage of the surveyed schoolchildren (about 2%) use the sites that offer ready homework.

Yaroslav Kuzminov - Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya St., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: kouzminov@hse.ru

Dmitriy Peskov - Director of the Young Professionals Direction at the Agency for Strategic Initiatives. Address: 36/9 Novy Arbat, 121099 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: dn.peskov@asi.ru

Which non-educational processes will influence the development of universities in the next 15–20 years? Whom will universities compete with? How will education markets change? What will be the relationships between future universities and external environment, society, government, businesses, and other universities? The future of universities is discussed between Yaroslav Kuzminov, Rector of the National Research University Higher school of Economics (HSE), and Dmitry Peskov, Director of the Young Professionals Direction at the Agency for Strategic Initiatives. The meeting was organized by Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow journal.

Lev Lyubimov - Doctor of Sciences in Economics, Professor, Faculty of Economic Sciences, National Research University, Higher School of Economics. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya St., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: llubimov@hse.ru

The ideas gathered in the book should be of interest to every school that intends to implement the National Learning Standard. These ideas have to do with personal development of children, getting children prepared for further development, inculcation of cognitive competencies, collective learning, learning content as a perspective of the world, and the need for radical change in teaching foreign languages in school.

Gasan Guseynov - Doctor of Sciences in Philology, Professor, School of Philology, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya St., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: gguseynov@hse.ru

An answer is sought for the question as to why the United States remain the most attractive place in the world to get tertiary education despite its permanent secondary school crisis, based on what David Cohen reveals about U.S. education as well as what he would probably prefer not to disclose but which becomes obvious from his book. The U.S. tertiary education system makes good use of the best outcomes of secondary education from all over the world to develop the most advanced forms of higher education. Their  education system rests on a self-organizing social environment, which has been great at adjusting to changing global trends. The attitude towards education as a constantly renewing process of criticizing the foundations and traditions of teaching is a key element of the worldwide influence of American universities. The article is focused on describing the mechanisms of adjusting the social environment through the development of outstripping forms of educational institutions and projects.

Alexander Chepurenko - Doctor of Sciences (Economics), Professor, Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Sociology, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya St., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation.
E-mail: achepurenko@hse.ru

In the paper, some social, academic and organizational aspects of entrepreneurship education in Russian universities are analyzed from a polemical perspective. The author argues that some widespread approaches of entrepreneurship education in Russian colleges are  ither less efficient or do not fit, and delivers a concept and structure of an all-university three-level elective course in innovative entrepreneurship, which could be implemented in some leading universities as a minor in entrepreneurship to support students when developing or enhancing the key entrepreneurial competencies. Major limitations (risks) and opportunities (chances) of universities willing to implement this teaching module are described.