Society news at HSE University

On March 13, 2014, the HSE Center for Institutional Studies held a seminar to discuss the role of the joint comparative studies being carried out by universities in various countries to measure national systems of higher education. Philip Altbach, Research Professor and Director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, USA, took part. Later, in an interview for the HSE News Service, he shared his experiences conducting joint research with Russian universities.

Results of a survey by the Levada Centre for social research show that price increases are the thing that Russians worry about most. The second thing on their worry list is poverty and the third, – unemployment. Only a tiny 4% of those asked said they worry about restrictions on civil rights and democratic freedoms. HSE professor and researcherNataliya Tikhonova explains why, if we look more closely, these results are not actually surprising at all.

Society views businesspeople negatively, and family is often unable to help. Alexander Tatarko, lead researcher at the HSE’s International Scientific-Educational Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research, recently released a study entitled 'Individual Social Capital as a Success Factor in Starting a New Business'.

Martin Carnoy, Academic Supervisor of the HSE International Laboratory for Educational Policy Research and the Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University, has been ranked fourteenth among North America’s most influential education scholars. He was recognized for his work analysing the results of an international education assessment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited Yaroslav Kuzminov to become a member of the Civic Chamber. A law, passed at the end of December, 2013 laid down new principles of how the Chamber is formed.

The parts of Russia which migrant workers from the CIS find most attractive are changing. The ‘map’ of migration flows depends on which way the investments are going. But at the same time, the general picture is unchanged: we don’t yet have an efficient system for gathering the foreign labour force we need. In an article in the HSE journal ‘Demoscope Weekly’, Olga Chudinovskikh, Mikhail Denisenko and Nikita Mkrtchyan explained their research findings.

The HSE's public lectures held in Gorky Park in summer are now continuing in Moscow museums.

PayPal, the service  that allows people to send payments without sharing financial information, announced the $100,000 grand-prize winner of its Battle Hack Series, a global hackathon competition. The two-day Battle Hack World Finals took place at the PayPal Headquarters in San Jose and hosted 10 teams of developers from across the globe.