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

Federal and regional maternity benefits such as 'maternal capital', larger child allowances, and other measures introduced since 2007 to improve the country's demography have led to more births, but have not yet contributed to effective fertility rates in Russia. A paper by Sergey Zakharov and Thomas Freyka in the HSE's new Demographic Review journal examines Russia's reproductive trends over the past half-century in an attempt to make projections concerning the future effects of the country's demographic policies

After the Russian Unified State Exam (USE) was introduced, additional exam preparation did not lose its popularity. While there was previously a preference for tutors from the university a student had selected, now students are finding instructors ‘off the street’ to prepare them for the USE, Ilya Prakhov, Research Fellow in HSE’s International Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms (LIA), uncovered in his study, ‘The Dynamics of Investment and the Return on Additional Pre-entry Coaching’

One third of all graduates from regional colleges and universities plan to move elsewhere. Most would like to relocate to another Russian city, while some 7% of graduates are planning to leave the country, according to the study 'Migration Intentions of Graduates of Russia’s Regional Higher Educational Institutions' by Elena Varshavskaya, Professor at the HSE's Department of Human Resources Management, and Olga Choudinovskikh, Director of the Centre for Migration Policy

Despite the expansion of higher education throughout the world, it is not easy for a young professional to become a full-time university instructor with a good salary. Many things prevent this: universities’ personnel policies, weakening growth in state funding, and the increased importance of social connections in place of recruitment advertising, according to the research of Martin Finkelstein, Kevin Iglesias, Anna Panova and Maria Yudkevich

The social standing of parents has a greater effect on a child's education than the kind of school the child attends – in fact, the school's human, material, and financial resources make almost no difference to a student’s academic performance, according to a study by Senior Lecturer of the HSE's Subdepartment of Economic Methodology and History Gordey Yastrebov and Master's student at the HSE's Faculty of Economics Alexei Uvarov

In many cases combining study and work not only doesn’t undermine a student’s achievements, it actually enhances them. The experience of working in the field you are studying at university helps better master a profession and doesn’t cause a time conflict, says Diana Yanbarisova, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Education, in her article, published in the latest issue of the HSE’s journal Voprosy Obrazovania (Issues of Education)

Lifelong learning is increasingly common in Russia. One can assume looking at the booming global business of online education with platforms such as Coursera, EdX, and Udacity, and various webinars and video lectures that the internet serves as the main channel of lifelong learning today. In Russia, however, the World Wide Web comes second to more traditional ways of learning. So Konstantin Fursov and Elena Chernovich, research fellows at the HSE's Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK), found in their study Monitoring Innovative Behaviour in the Russian Population in 2013

The personality traits of Russian students do not have an overall significant impact on academic performance at the university. In the West, those who are more responsible, open and inclined to take risks turn out to be better students, Ekaterina Kochergina and Ekaterina Orel said at an academic seminar of HSE’s Center for Institutional Studies

The high turnover of researchers and lecturers at universities cannot be fully explained merely by low pay or a lack of opportunities for self-fulfillment. Sometimes, young people choose an academic career for reasons other than an interest in research; they may take a postgraduate course to escape military service, to defer employment, or to meet society's expectations, according to Anastasia Sizykh, Research Fellow of the HSE's Institute of Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK)

The number of people travelling to the U.S. for engineering studies has grown dramatically in the past 20 years, while the number of foreign doctorate recipients who return to their home countries has dropped. The increase in the number of non-returnees is due mainly to poor governance in the graduates' home countries, according to the report 'Drivers of Migration among Young Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities', which was prepared by Timur Natkhov, Associate Professor of the HSE's Subdepartment of Institutional Economics