Universities decline not only due to a lack of money, enrollment of weak students, lack of ties with professional communities, and brain drain. Conservatism of their administration, lecturers and scholars is also an obstacle to the life-saving ‘reset’ of universities, Isak Froumin, Academic Supervisor of the HSE Institute of Education, and Mikhail Lisyutkin, Junior Research Fellow at this Institute, say in their paper ‘The Phenomenon of Degrading Universities in Russia. Stating the Problem’

In the past year, 57% of adult Russians have donated money to charity or to strangers in need. Health, religion, disaster relief, and orphanages were the most popular causes, according to Irina Mersiyanova, Director of the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and Non-Profit Sector, and Irina Korneyeva, researcher with the same Centre

Family is a more significant institution for Russians than it is for residents of a number of other European countries. Amid ongoing demographic modernization – the liberalization of marriage and the emancipation of women – ideas are still popular in Russia concerning the necessity of a stable union, procreation, and the mostly familial function of women, according to Marharyta Fabrykant, Junior Research Fellow with HSE’s Laboratory for Comparative Studies in Mass Consciousness

Competition among science laboratories often goes hand in hand with mutual assistance, allowing them to maximise their limited resources, such as expertise, grants, equipment, and supplies. Anna Artyushina, postgratuate student at the HSE, studied the trends in laboratory cooperation trends in the biotechnology field – one of the most competitive areas of science

The proportion of children born outside of marriage is declining in Russia – not because fewer children are being born out of wedlock, but because more children are being born to married couples. In fact, out-of-wedlock children are not necessarily born to single women as used to happen in Soviet times, but instead, most are born to couples living in unregistered unions, according to Sergey Zakharov, Deputy Director of the HSE's Institute of Demography, and Elena Churilova, Postgraduate Student at the Institute's Department of Demography

Russia's labour market has a growing demand for unskilled migrant workers from other CIS countries. Migrants who have worked in managerial or professional positions in their home countries almost always see their status decline once they move to Russia. In contrast, less skilled workers easily find jobs of similar status in Russia, according to Elena Varshavskaya, Professor of the HSE's Department of Human Resources Management, and Mikhail Denisenko, Deputy Director of the HSE's Institute of Demography

People's lives today are more flexible, while individual biographies – even though they may look like 'games without rules' to an outsider – are in fact carefully designed around personal choices. These are the main themes of a paper by Sergey Zakharov and Ekaterina Mitrofanova published in the monograph Russia and China: Youth in the 21st Century. Although the paper focuses mainly on young Russians' reproductive behavior, its content goes beyond demographics and addresses certain existential aspects, such as non-stereotypical biographies of modern people and their diverse identities, values, ​​and desires

Muscovites who live between the capital’s Ring Road and the Third Ring Road are rooted in their region and, contrary to popular myths, do not try to move into the city centre. In their view, ‘Old Moscow’ is more a territory for rest than a business and residential area. This stereotype is also supported by Moscow’s radial ring structure, which is designed to regulate the influx of people into the city centre, Alexey Levinson said in HSE’s ‘Demoscope Weekly’ journal

Extracurricular activities continue to be popular among Russian youngsters, and most school students attend after-school clubs and classes, including those offered by their own school. Youngsters who are not involved in any after-school activities explain it by not having enough time or not having access to out-of-school programmes which are either non-existent in their community or out of their price range. These are some of the findings of a study by Daniil Alexandrov, Head of the HSE's Research Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science (St. Petersburg), and Valeria Ivaniushina, Senior Research Fellow of the same Laboratory

Integrating Russia’s academic community into the larger international community, internationalizing Russian academic journals, and improving the quality of publications and research – these are the ultimate priorities of a new project the HSE is participating in called the Russian Science Citation Index. The project is being carried out on Web of Science, a leading global search engine for academic publications. By the end of next year, a national database is to be created that comprises the best Russian journals and publications from the last ten years. The database will undoubtedly become a part of the international publication space

Russian society has a generally low level of trust. Colleagues and neighbours are the only exception – Russians regard them as trustworthy. A trusting attitude towards one's inner circle of acquaintances has a greater effect on life satisfaction than trust in public institutions and people in general, according to Anna Mironova, Research Intern of the HSE’s International Laboratory of Socio-Cultural Research

Young Russians took the Sochi Olympics as a family holiday rather than a state one. Their parents’ nostalgic memories about the 1980 Olympic Games played their role, which were a personal and at the same time a national event for many Russians. Sochi 2014’s promotion as a national holiday worked worse, though. For young people, the excitement in official media was drowned by criticism of the Olympics on the internet, Anna Sanina, Associate Professor at the HSE St. Petersburg Department of State and Municipal Administration, and research assistants Anastasia Kozlova and Olesya Trigolos, found out