Social networks have been found to influence academic performance: students tend to perform better with high-performers among their friends, as some people are capable of inspiring others to try harder, according to Maria Yudkevich, Sofia Dokuka and Dilara Valeyeva of the HSE Centre for Institutional Studies.

Parents of school students in Moscow tend to believe that test assignments in two major final exams—the Basic State Exam (BSE) and the Unified State Exam (USE)—are too complex and teachers fail to properly prepare students for the finals; this negative attitude, which appears to be a widely-held stereotype not necessarily supported by evidence, is formed long before the exams come round. However, according to a study by Alina Pishnyak and Natalia Khalina, once the exams are over, families no longer consider them so hard to pass.

By choosing education for their children, parents tend to perpetuate social inequalities. While educated middle-class parents invest in their children's future by selecting the best possible school and becoming actively involved in the educational process, working-class families often feel they cannot afford to choose and instead, send children to the nearest school, expecting them to make it on their own, according to Larisa Shpakovskaya, Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, HSE Campus in St. Petersburg.

Decisions relating to student dropout often resemble a trial with students as defendants and teachers as prosecutors and judges. This approach can create barriers between students and staff and raise the issue of the university's mission, according to Ivan Gruzdev, Evgeny Terentiev and Elena Gorbunova of the HSE’s Internal Monitoring Center.

Higher education cuts the risk of poverty by more than half, according to Alina Pishnyak and Daria Popova, leading researchers at the HSE Centre for Studies of Income and Living Standards. Their findings reveal that the household incomes of families where all adults are university-educated stand at 20% above the average, and conversely, in families where none of the adults hold a degree, living standards tend to be below average by a quarter.

Abusive parents, internet and TV violence, and social exclusion are all contributing to growing violence in schools, with verbal aggression being the most common type of aggressive behaviour among young people, according to Irina Sizova, Head of the Sociology Laboratory at the HSE Branch in Nizhny Novgorod.

Some university teachers, but not all, are involved in their school's affairs and tend to take its failures personally and celebrate its successes as their own. Some teachers are willing to work weekends, help their colleagues and engage in various extracurricular activities, while others stick firmly to their job descriptions and rarely agree to do anything not expressly stated in their contract. According to Andrey Lovakov, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE International Research Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms, what makes a difference between the former and the latter is the level of commitment to their institution determined by a number of factors.

In choosing a field for further studies, high school students are influenced by their peers, among other factors. For example, a high school student interested in technology among a class of peers who are not so good at physics may perceive it as a competitive advantage, increasing the likelihood of their choice of a technical field for a career, according to Andrey Zakharov, Deputy Head of the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis at the HSE's Graduate School of Education, and Elizaveta Chernenko, Research Fellow of the same laboratory.

State funding for education systems fails to take popular demand into account. About 10% of state-funded places are not in areas that interest school-leavers. There are too few options in the humanities, and too many in engineering, research carried out by the HSE’s Institute of Education, School of Mathematics, the Educational Center of Semantic Technology and Faculty of Economics.

Students who choose to pursue a master's or postgraduate degree are at a distinct advantage over those who stop after receiving a bachelor's degree, and can expect higher starting salaries and a wider career choice. Some students, particularly those studying the humanities, medicine, and natural sciences, are more likely to pursue further studies beyond the undergraduate programme, observes Yana Roschina, senior research fellow at the HSE's Laboratory of Economics and Social Research, in her report 'Factors Influencing Russian Students' Educational and Employment Plans'

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’

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