Tag "education"

Attitudes towards education are often inherited, with parents explaining to their children what university education can give them. They offer very pragmatic arguments—that higher education ensures a more successful career, interesting work and a good income. But there are also other arguments that should not be underestimated. At this time when many universities are holding open house, IQ.HSE draws on a study by HSE scholars Tatiana Chirkina and Amina Guseynova to explain the attitudes towards education that parents give their children and which considerations they might have overlooked.

Students can learn difficult material much more efficiently by collaborating than by studying individually. They help each other, share information, and build collective knowledge. However, things are not as simple as they may seem. Cooperation between students is effective for certain activities, but not others. As researchers from the HSE Institute of Education have shown, knowledge is absorbed more effectively through group work, but the same benefits are not found when it comes to the practical application of knowledge. 

Women typically earn 18%-20% less than men do with the same education, profession and personal characteristics, researchers from the Higher School of Economics found using data from an employment survey of young personnel. What’s more, this income gap has a cumulative effect, growing wider the longer a woman works. Education, however, significantly compensates for this ‘penalty’. IQ.HSE examined this issue with the help of a study by Margarita Kiryushina and Victor Rudakova.

Teaching is a stressful job, and with schools and universities operating remotely over the last eighteen months, teachers’ worries have increased dramatically. In the latest in a series of articles on distance learning, IQ.HSE reports on research conducted by the HSE University Institute of Education on how teachers have been coping with stress.

HSE University researchers have analyzed the economic performance of almost a hundred countries to understand whether government investment in education pays off. The economists explain what kind of recommendations may be offered to governments—and how they vary based on a country's level of development—in the Voprosy Statistiki journal

Educational inequality is a universal problem, but it manifests itself in different countries in different ways. Comparing the issue across different contexts is always interesting—even more so if the person doing the comparing has a diverse set of examples to draw upon. Adam Gemar earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the US before earning his Doctoral degree at Durham University (UK). Now he is a Postdoctoral Fellow at HSE University’s Institute of Education, where he is studying educational inequality in Russia with the Centre for Cultural Sociology. In his interview, he spoke about his research, life in Moscow, and Russian winters.

Four-year, instead of five-year, degree programmes shave off a year of study, thus saving considerable time and money, and allowing graduates to find employment and build work experience earlier, which eventually translates into a higher salary. This raises the question of whether a fifth year of undergraduate studies brings any returns at all.

In 2012, many universities started signing incentive contracts with their staff in order to stimulate research and active inclusion in the global academic market. Together with orders issued by Russia’s president in May, this has led to growth in university salaries. But exactly which responsibilities increase pay — teaching, research or administrative work? The answer to this question will help improve the effective contract system to make it profitable both for teachers and universities.

Most international students in Russia come from CIS countries, or former Soviet republics in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. The preserved social and cultural links promote this, as well as students’ good command of Russian. Students from outside the former Soviet Union come to Russia primarily due to economic reasons and the strong reputation of Russia’s leading universities. At the same time, however, they often see Russia as an unsafe country and consider it a backup plan.

2020 has definitely become a year of online learning. Children of all ages, as well as many adults, have had to study remotely. This has allowed researchers to look at education accessibility problems from a new perspective and evaluate how the massive transition to online learning aligns with existing norms and attitudes toward limiting screen time. Nadezhda Knyaginina and Evgenii Puchkov, researchers from the Education Law Laboratory at the HSE Institute of Education talked about their lab’s research on this matter.