At the present stage of modernization and development of the higher education system in the Russian Federation, universities are being differentiated with the aim of creating new university types and shaping new strategies for their development and, thus, achieving high efficiency of personnel management and acquiring professional competences. These tasks are of strategic importance. It is a matter of urgency to develop a model for administrative staff remuneration system transformation based on a competitive environment and adapted to the realities of the modern federal university. In this work, basing on the analysis of human resource management mechanisms of universities in Western Europe, the CIS countries, and the Baltic states, the efficiency and motivation improvement model for administrative and managerial personnel is proposed. The model is exemplified by case of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, which is one of the leading universities of the Russian Federation and a participant of Russian Academic Excellence Project 5-100. The staff incentive scheme and the labor stimulation criteria were formulated according to the proposed model following the “functioning – development” concept, effective contract criteria for administrative and managerial staff in university and respective weights were proposed.
This study is based on a comprehensive approach to the administrative and managerial staff activity analysis, which includes methods of PEST analysis, SWOT analysis, and analytical analysis of data from expert surveys. The correlation analysis of the results was performed using specialized program written in Python.

The problem of University autonomy goes back centuries. However, it has not lost its relevance today, and is far from final resolution. This problem has been solved in different ways in different historical periods and in different countries. There is no unambiguity in the approaches to its development even today. It is particularly significant for modern Russia, which is faced with the task of achieving the competitiveness of domestic higher education in the global educational space and ensuring its high-quality functioning, which would become a solid foundation for further progress and prosperity of the country. The authors highlight a new aspect in the study of this problem, namely, the perception of the state of autonomy of Russian universities by their rectors. At the same time, it is emphasized that the subjective and psychological aspect of the issue is no less important than the study of legal or economic aspects, since the opinion of rectors reflects the consolidated position of thousands of higher school employees whose social well-being is a significant factor in the effectiveness of universities. Based on the survey of rectors of regional universities, the article reveals some general trends and specific positions of those heads of higher education institutions that indicate a narrowing of University autonomy at the present time, and those who consider its current state to be satisfactory and stable.

The review article summarizes the processes of development of higher education sociology abroad over the past 50 years. The choice of the research object was determined by the real achievements of national higher education systems and a high level of higher school sociology development in USA, Great Britain, France, Scandinavian countries, and Spain. The review reflects the advancement of leading sociologists of higher education in these countries. The authors have applied a methodology of comparative analysis studying the Western experience of sociological research in higher education, the main ideas and trends. The article dwells on the ways of changes in the content field of Western sociology of higher education. The practical significance of the review is determined by the possibilities of using the proposed analysis for the development of Russian sociology of higher education and University development practices.

In order to improve the training of masters majoring in “Personnel Management”, a sociological study of the opinions of employers was carried out. Based on the results of the study, HRtechnologies were clarified and the content of professional competencies, which should be possessed by specialists in HRM departments of organizations and enterprises who belong to the category of creative personnel, was disclosed. The main driving force behind the growth of innovative economies of developed and developing countries is a social group of people characterized by a high level of education, creative abilities and entrepreneurial behavior skills. This social group is called the “creative class”. The general criteria for classifying employees as creative personnel are defined. At the preliminary stage of the study, the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education 38.04.03 “Personnel Management (Master’s level)” was analyzed as well as the requirements of a professional standard for a HRM specialist. To study the opinions of employers, a two-stage study was carried out. At the first stage, a focused interview with senior management staff was carried out in order to find out the practical methods of working with creative staff (N = 43). The working hypothesis was the assumption that there is a significant specificity in the processes of attracting, developing and retaining creative staff. The results of the processing of interview texts are presented. Based on the interview, a list of professional competencies was prepared, the possession of them can improve the quality of creative staff management. At the second stage, a questionnaire survey was conducted among a wider group of employers with the task of determining the priority of the proposed professional competencies (N=87). Interviews and questionnaires were conducted with representatives of human resources and the management team of enterprises and organizations (including higher education institutions) of Nizhny Novgorod, whose main activity is aimed at obtaining an intellectual product. Two senior employees of one of the largest startups in Silicon Valley (USA) were among the interviewees. The authors, with the support of the Vladimir Potanin Scholarship Program, have developed a master’s program in Creative Human Resources Management. Based on the results of the study, appropriate adjustments were made to the work programs of the disciplines and to the list of professional competencies of the developed master’s program, which determine its orientation.

The article continues the author’s series of publications aimed at building an educational cultural configurator which ties three themes into a single knot – the sphere of education, the City and the Person. A cross-cutting cultural “glue” of this bundle is the experience of anthropological practitioners of human care for themselves, through which, doing which, a person is becoming his true self. The paper proposes to consider the experience of compiling such a repertoire of anthropopractices of care, which sets the completeness of the care experience. The completeness of the repertoire of anthropological practitioners can be represented only in one cultural image – the image of the City, in which it is possible to build a real educational navigation of a person. Based on the experience of other researchers, the author proposes a configurator that combines the repertoire of anthropopractices of care, the fullness of cultural forms that make up the city space, and the universe of a person’s personality, formed through the experience of the practices of caring in a person. Thus, a cultural invariant is proposed, which can be laid at the basis of various educational programs for human development, overcoming various kinds of reductions that that are inherent in modern educational practice.

The article examines the problem of assessing the competitiveness of universities from the perspective of regional and urban development. The paper raises the question of taking into account the criteria aimed at examining the benefits of universities for the territory of presence in the modern methodology of assessing the effectiveness of universities. The article considers the advisability of integrating the results of international university rankings in the development of indices which assess the impact of universities on urban development. It includes a review of the methodologies of compiling international city rankings (Global Cities Index, Cities of opportunity, Mercer Quality of Living, The Global City Competitiveness Index, QS Best Student Cities) in order to identify the content and significance of the criteria aimed at assessment of the effectiveness of universities. The paper gives a critical assessment of international university rankings (Qs World University Rankings, Times Higher Education, Academic Ranking of World Universities). It also proposes criteria to evaluate universities from the perspective of the benefits they bring to the cities in which they are present. The article was prepared as part of the research work of the state task of the RANEPA under the President of the Russian Federation.

Educational institutions develop professional training programs for teachers so they could bring technology into the classroom and take the quality of education to a new level. However, despite the measures being adopted, a number of researchers report unsatisfying results. One of the root causes of this situation seems to be the absence of clear understanding of what the notions of digital competence and pedagogical digital competence are supposed to include. This problem is tightly connected with the problem of creating a framework for the development of digital skills of an instructor. On one hand, there is a demand for universal models that would include a wide range of pedagogical digital skills. There is a demand for universal models, which would include the widest possible range of digital competences of a teacher. Among them there are such existing frameworks as DigiCompEdu, ICT CFT, TETCs, which cover numerous aspects of instructors’ work. Meanwhile, there is the lack of models that would structurize the professional practice of a teacher at the micro level of using a digital instrument. There is a necessity for the framework comprising a limited set of primary basic skills which would be universal enough to be applicable to operating any kind of technology. In the article, we propose a version of this type of a framework.

The article discusses modern approaches to the procedures for awarding qualifications based on the results of formal, non-formal, and informal education. The article analyzes domestic and best foreign practices that have received recognition from the world educational community. Innovative tools for assessing qualifications are considered. In this regard, the experience of South Korea described in the article is interesting, using the Register of Academic Credit Units as the main tool for the recognition of qualifications. Similar systems are used in France and Denmark. In Germany, Norway and Japan, modern information and communication systems are being actively introduced to accumulate information about the qualifications of the adult population. In Italy, it is legally established that qualifications obtained through formal, non-formal, and informal means are equivalent. The experience of Italy is valuable in that the results of not only non-formal but also informal learning are taken into account during the qualification recognition procedure. The educational legislation of the Russian Federation makes it possible to take into account certain documented results of non-formal and informal learning obtained in the course of mastering additional education programs, including in relation to higher education programs. However, some learning outcomes can be difficult to recognize, especially if they are not documented. The article proposes a project model for the recognition of qualifications obtained in the course of non-formal and informal education, which could be considered as promising for the Russian Federation.

Each personality contains a part of the fullness and depth of the World and the completeness of it depends on personality’s own abilities and talents. Each «I» has the right to consider itself valuable and can claim to have a dialogue with another personality. A personality can evaluate and contain various cultures, knowledge and beliefs, science and religions. Each personality actualizes what can be called the development of thought throughout time. Moreover, not only «in the time» in sense of Newton’s and Einstein’s physics, but, mainly, in what we call «the time of the appearance of the Savior», «Shakespeare’s time », «our time». That is, a set of conditions under which historical events occur. All these times are characterized by their own way of thinking and their own level of knowledge. And their own laws of existence. This means not only the factual existence, but also that exists in the imagination of the individual. At the same time, imaginary reality can more affect a person’s worldview than actual reality. The development of thought throughout time brought a lot of useful things to a person, but also a lot of disastrous ones, such as conflicts and wars, global catastrophic risk, world-wide pre-crisis ecology problems, and a lot of other troubles – all these that can direct a person’s thought towards dreams and imagination. Current problems of time, of course, disappear and are absorbed by Eternity. Eternity embraces and completes all time and existence. However, if you connect your imagination, then an inquisitive, free thought can assume the existence of the Pre-Eternal. Absolute, God. Just assume that He controls us, but we must trust Him with many of our concerns.
Existence is a fundamental category. You can exist in reality or in imagination…or in the reality of imagination. The author considers the conversation about existence for himself not yet complete...

Education restructuring projects require efficiency criteria for the assessment and monitoring of management efforts to achieve set goals. The article focuses on understanding the efficiency itself and the essence of its assessment. The key points of formation and methodological innovations of the presented concept of diagnostics which substantiates the relevance are discussed: interpretations of education systems as semiotic systems; management of the transformation of education systems based on the measurement of the parameters of the order of self-organization of complex open systems; selecting, as a control parameter, the order of the characteristic “information efficiency”. This characteristic makes it possible to implement a procedure for measuring two competitive interactions: the process of selecting the optimal ways to achieve an asymptotically distant goal and the process of the competition of semiotic attractors as an expression of asymptotic goals. The specificity of self-organization mechanisms puts forward requirements for managing these processes. These requirements are the need to conduct such a selection which does not cut off other paths to other goals but changes the hierarchy in the subordination of ways to achieve goals. Ignoring the requirement leads to the selection out of “one” path. Conclusions regarding the determination of the place of pedagogical education in the context of modernization of the entire system of national education are drawn. Firstly, the implementation of technologies that demonstrate their efficiency in foreign experience into the practice of national education should be guided by the fact that this efficiency was obtained to achieve substantially different goals. Secondly, the implementation of innovative educational technologies in teacher training should be ahead of this implementation in teaching practice at all educational levels, which will ensure that the advantages of these technologies are effectively tuned to achieve the goals of national education.

This article considers the identification of the VUCA-world influence as a modern reality on the transformation of University on the example of Norilsk State Industrial Institute, its internal development space. The research relies on various methods: case-method, foresight, design method, depth interviews with the most important stakeholders, theoretical and empirical methods, logical and system analysis, methods of description, forecast and peer review. The theoretical basis of the study is the methodology within the VUCA-Prime strategy. The way to build the inner space of University development starts with the definition of reference points and development of university transformation mechanisms in conditions of VUCA world, which is a significant context of modern reality. This reality is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. The authors present a model that has the potential to reduce uncertainty and transform qualitatively the inner space of the University.

The methodological problem of student-centered education and the person-oriented paradigm is revealed. The article considers the experience of Norilsk State Industrial Institute on the creation of a dialogue atmosphere «teacher – student – employer», which is characterized by respectful attitude of a student towards a teacher and employer. Our approach implies that student accepts a guiding influence of teacher and employer on his/her personal and professional development. The authors dwell on the model that has been introduced in the educational process to develop hard and soft skills in students demanded by the employer. The employer compiles competency models for every training area. According to these models, the University forms competency maps. A rapid response of the university to the formation of the relevant hard and soft skills is possible due to introducing them into the system of supplementary education, as well as the active participation of the employer at all stages of the educational process. The educational program «Formation of soft skills based on the practice of mindfulness» on the portal of the Norilsk State Industrial Institute is available for free and free training for everyone.

The article focuses on the criteria of pedagogical innovation. Along with such criteria as an obvious novelty and effectiveness, the author dwells on the adequacy of the considered pedagogical experience to ensure the advanced scientific and technological challenges of the time, as well as the solution of priority social problems. This implies that the tasks are reflected primarily in the conceptual documents of the country’s development. This criterion corresponds to a narrow understanding of innovation, which is associated with the system of «scientific novelty – technological (social) project – development – implementation». The broad understanding of the category «innovation» is determined by the development and preservation of the anthropological potential of society and education in particular. The relevance of the proposed basic criterion is revealed as a result of a critical analysis of a scientific publication devoted to the pedagogical experience within the system of military education. The article justifies the real anti-innovative systemic effects of the so called «Innovative approach».
In the context of the growing pace of the scientific and technological revolution, the concept of «Asymmetric response» to the innovative challenges of the time is introduced. As a result of the analysis of the achievements of domestic and foreign scientists, a set of «Asymmetric measures» is proposed. They stemmed from the development of universal basic information, creative competencies, and polytechnic skills, as well as humanitarian and economic orientation of training, the development of primarily STEM-areas in school education, simulation and distance learning tools, innovative pedagogical technologies.