In an interview for CIRGE Washington University on the ongoing reforms and pending challenges in Russian doctoral education, Senior Research Fellow at HSE’s Institute for Higher Education, Igor Chirikov explains the peculiar economic, social and bureaucratic problems and academic traditions that are hampering the careers of Russian academics but he also gives reasons to be optimistic about change for the future.
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Employee engagement is essential to company performance. Mid-level managers tend to be the most engaged type of employees, according to a study by Veronica Kabalina and Ludmila Cheglakova of the HSE's Faculty of Management.
The first issue of The HSE Look in 2015 brings the Faculty of Mathematics into the spotlight. The Dean of the faculty, Professor Sergei Lando, talks about the life of the collective that he heads and about mathematical education in Russia then and now.
Mortality among people aged over 60 due to injuries, poisonings, road accidents, murders, falls, and other external causes remains high in Russia. At the same time, the elderly commit less suicides and less frequently die in road accidents, concluded Inna Danilova, postgraduate student at the HSE Institute of Demography, in her article ‘Old-age mortality from external causes of death in Russia’.
In the year that marks the 70th anniversary of victory in the Second World War, we talk to Kristy Ironside, who received her BA and MA from the University of Toronto before going on to complete her PhD at the University of Chicago, and who is currently researching life in the Soviet Union in the post-war years. Kristy Ironside’s work examines what the War meant to ordinary people, how their lives changed — and how Soviet society coped with the aftermath.
It is becoming more and more common for employers to hire workers under fixed-term contracts. This allows companies to save money and more easily adapt to the changing conditions of the market. Flexible employment regulations do not, however, foster growth in productivity or an adequate reallocation of resources on the labour market, the Deputy Head of HSE’s Laboratory for Labour Market Studies, Larisa Smirrnykh, posits.
On 12 January, Chares Demetriou presented his book The Dynamics of Radicalization: A Relational and Comparative Perspective at a seminar of the Laboratory for Economic-Sociological Research. His main research interests are in issues of legitimacy and political violence, social movements and nationalism. In his lecture, Demetriou presented new ways of analysing the radicalisation of political groups.
Melanie Sheldon, an instructor at the University of Missouri – Columbia, recently offered a lecture course at the HSE Winter School 2015 on the psychology of motivation, which was organized by the International Laboratory of Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation, headed by Dmitry Leontiev. She also offered an open lecture on 'Sex and Evolutionary Psychology' at HSE. Melanie recently spoke with the HSE news service about her experience taking part in the HSE Winter School.
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'.