This article is the second part of the research examining the trajectories of recent Master’s degree holders in Russia, with a focus on their labour market outcomes. It addresses the topic of study and work, and examines the professional and sectoral structure of employment one and four years after graduation. Using regression analysis and a Heckman model, the paper estimates the wage premium associated with a Master’s degree one and four years after graduation. The results indicate that, in general, a Master’s degree implies a positive wage premium for both full- and part-time graduates, which increases significantly with career progression and work experience. In the first year after graduation, the salary premium is 5–8% for full-time graduates and 8–13% for part-time graduates. By the fourth year, this premium rises to 6–10% for full-time graduates and 4–6% for part-time graduates. On average, the premium for a Master’s degree is higher for women than for men. The key fields of study that offer a stable premium in both full-time and part-time education are economics and management, whereas humanities and arts do not offer any significant returns. The results suggest that the Russian labour market can distinguish between a Master’s and a Bachelor’s qualification and highly values the former, especially when combined with other characteristics of human capital. 

In recent decades, an increasing number of educational programs offering students individual educational trajectories (IET) have appeared in Russian universities. It is believed that such programs better contribute to the development of students’ generic skills due to a personalized approach and providing students with wide opportunities to choose courses that match their interests. However, at this moment, there is no empirical evidence to support this thesis. In this work, based on survey data (N=1647 students) collected at seven Russian universities combining traditionally fixed-group programs with IET programs, the authors examined the relationship between students’ assessment of their universal skills development and their learning in IET programs. According to student evaluations, IET-based curricula fostered higher levels of cognitive, communicative, socioemotional and self-organization skills. These findings can be explained by the fact that such programs afford students broad opportunities for choice, which may more effectively enhance intrinsic motivation for university studying, as well as provide novel experiences distinct from those encountered in school, thereby facilitating more intensive development of the aforementioned skills. In the concluding section, we discuss recommendations for higher education institutions aimed at potentially augmenting the contribution of IET programs to students’ transferable skill development. The work is of interest to researchers in the field of higher education, university administrators, and university teachers aimed at developing student generic skills. 

One of the most important tasks of the state youth policy in modern Russia is the formation of a harmonious, socially responsible and patriotic personality. A special place in this process is given to the organization of educational work in universities in general, and patriotic education in particular. Based on the results of a specific sociological study among students of more than fifty universities in Moscow, the article identifies vectors for improving youth policy in the field of organizing patriotic education in universities. It was found that among the sources of information about patriotic events at universities, both agents of direct, interpersonal communication (teachers, classmates) and indirect (distant) virtual communication (social networks, university website) are equally important for respondents. The significant role of humanities disciplines in the formation of the patriotic consciousness of students has been confirmed. It was determined that the overwhelming majority of respondents are interested in patriotic events. However, more than half of the respondents also have a request to change the package of these measures. And most of all, there is a need for contacts with bearers of authentic, emotional experience of heroism, the formation of the Spirit, working with documents in archives and participating in historical reconstructions. Moreover, this request exceeds the request to participate in mass events and transfer them to the virtual space. 

At present, one of the strategic goals of our country’s development is to achieve technological leadership and sovereignty. To solve this problem, it is necessary to train appropriate engineering personnel, for which the reform of the engineering education system is being carried out. However, at the moment, the role and place of foreign language training in it are not entirely clear.

Historically, foreign language training in Russian technical universities has always been of great importance, as it prepared students for its real use in the professional activities of engineers. The article provides a justification for increasing the role of foreign language training in modern conditions, primarily global English, in order to achieve the technological sovereignty of the country, which involves international cooperation, as well as to carry out more significant information activities of an engineer in a foreign language due to the global nature of fundamental and applied knowledge, the unprecedented availability of foreign language information through the Internet and the need for rapid decision-making.

There has been revealed a contradiction has been between the real demand for the use of a foreign language in the professional activity of an engineer and its insufficient reflection in professional standards and Federal State Educational Standards of Higher Education, which may lead in the process of the reform to an incorrect definition of the goals and content of foreign language educational programs and underestimation of their importance.

The emerging trend of reducing the number of contact hours devoted to studying the basic compulsory foreign language course in accordance with the developing concept of a single core of engineering education contradicts the need to preserve the fundamental nature of education as one of the main advantages of domestic higher education and calls into question the possibility of ensuring continuity, professionalism and diversification of modern foreign language training in engineering education.

Based on the author’s empirical research, in the article a typology of models has been developed for the re-socialization of university students located in new Russian regions. The author identifies key parameters that make it possible to differentiate student youth and, based on this, identify possible trajectories for their reintegration into Russian society.

Based on the results of the research and cluster analysis, the author substantiates the existence of three groups of students who differ in terms of value orientations, life plans, and civic identity. The analysis resulted in the identification and verification of three types of models of student re-socialization in new Russian regions (“spontaneous model”, “protest model” and “congruent model”). The article describes clusters and models of resocialization, and makes separate recommendations aimed at differentiating youth and educational policies depending on a particular group of students. 

The article presents the results of a sociological study devoted to the analysis of the structure of admission to universities by level of education. The empirical basis of the study is the data of educational statistics of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. The purpose of the article is to analyze the formation of student contingents of universities, taking into account the features of educational trajectories along which students come to the university, including those who already have higher education. The diversity of educational trajectories that appeared after Russia’s transition to multi-level higher education is shown. The results of a comparative analysis of the formation of student contingents of different levels of higher education (bachelor’s degree, specialist’s degree, master’s degree), public and private universities are shown. Particular attention is paid to individuals entering a second or subsequent higher education. That is, such options for educational trajectories when people with higher education re-enter not only the same level of higher education that they received earlier, but also other levels that are lower than the ones they already have. These flows, called reversible, are given quantitative assessments, their scales and vectors of dynamics are described. This is the novelty of the work.

A conclusion is made about the emergence in post-Soviet Russia of a new, fairly stable channel for the formation of student contingents due to the so-called reversible students, a comparative analysis of state and private universities is given by the scale of reversible flows, their changes in dynamics. 

Based on a survey of 391 respondents from two universities in Moscow, the entrepreneurial intentions of students were analyzed. The aim of the work: to assess the moderating effect of personality characteristics (risk aversion and innovativeness) on the relationship between entrepreneurial intentions and their factors. The research method used is regression analysis with the interaction effects of the personality characteristics of the individual and the variables of perceived control and fears related to starting a business. It is shown that perceived control, personal attitudes and family environment are positively related to entrepreneurial intentions of students, while fears are negatively related. Subjective norms are not related to entrepreneurial intentions of students. ‘Entrepreneurial’ characteristics of students, namely risk aversion and innovativeness, weaken both the negative relationship between fears related to starting a business and entrepreneurial intentions and the positive relationship between perceived control and entrepreneurial intentions. The findings can be used in the formation of state policy in the field of entrepreneurial education, as well as directly in the creation of educational programs for students studying in areas where attention is paid to the development of entrepreneurial skills. 

The article analyzes the key regulatory documents of the Russian postgraduate school since its creation in 1925, characterizes the features of the organization of Russian and Soviet postgraduate studies, identifies historical parallels and patterns, causes and prerequisites for periodic reforms. Attention is drawn to the conditionality of postgraduate reforms by foreign policy and internal socio-economic factors. The present research aims to determine the specifics of the organization of the Russian postgraduate school, the strategy and tactics of training scientific and pedagogical personnel in Russia, to identify and characterize the main stages of postgraduate school reform. The main stages of the development and reform of Russian postgraduate studies in the Soviet and post–Soviet periods are highlighted. The normative features of these stages are identified as a result of the implementation of state policy in the current period – focusing on a scientific or educational component in the training of scientific-pedagogical staff within the framework of the general, historically defined, positioning of postgraduate studies as both a scientific and educational organization.The normative correlation of individual stages was revealed and the prerequisite for permanent reform of the training programs for scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel was determined in the USSR / Russia. The author substantiates as such a prerequisite the initially established model of Russian postgraduate studies. The author defines it as a “two-circuit” one, which includes university postgraduate studies, focused mainly on a broad educational (competence-based) approach, and highly specialized postgraduate studies in scientific research organizations. The reasons for the implementation of the two-circuit model, which were set in the early Soviet period, are established. The two-circuit model’s positive and problematic features in the Russian postgraduate school are revealed. The results of the study can be used to develop a strategy for training highly qualified personnel both in Russia and abroad.