News

HSE University has improved its positions in the Shanghai Ranking (ARWU) thanks to continued improvement in several indicators. For the second year in a row, HSE has ranked 4^th or 5^th among Russian universities, while globally, it has improved its rank to now being in the 601–700 group.

On August 9, a Soyuz 2.1b rocket launched with a payload of HSE University’s second satellite, which will monitor the land surface of the Arctic region. HSE MIEM Deputy Director Andrey Abrameshin spoke about the university’s space plans, while Top Class competition winner Alexey Gilenko shared his impressions of the launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Researcher Anastasia Dubnovitskaya of HSE University has studied the impact of social comparison on the level of Russians' pay satisfaction. The study used data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey — HSE University (RLMS-HSE) from 2002 to 2018. It turned out that the main contribution to Russians' pay satisfaction is the difference between their actual pay and the average wages of the reference group — people with similar characteristics. The size of one's own wages was of secondary importance.

The concept of Satanism originating from Roman Catholic sources continues to lack a rigorous social science interpretation. Satanism is sometimes believed to be a reflection of real-life problems faced by society and is sometimes considered a phenomenon in its own right that merits serious study. HSE doctoral student Oxana Mikhailova provides an overview of how the concept of Satanism is treated by different sociological theories and offers her commentary.

A large-scale study carried out by Anita Poplavskaya, postgraduate student at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences’ Department of Economic Sociology, on a sample of 5,000 undergraduates at eight regional universities in Russia reveals the students' prevalent work values. The top five include high pay, interest in one's work, job security, skills match, and career prospects. 

Every summer, HSE University students from various programmes have the opportunity to gain experience in their subject under real conditions. Second-year students of the Bachelor’s in Geography of Global Changes and Geoinformation Technology spent 24 days doing practical work in geoinformation technologies and spatial modelling, 17 of which were spent in the field.

Students of the Bachelor’s in Business Administration are working on a project to improve the efficiency of laboratory work at Voskresensk Mineral Fertilizers (VMF). In their six months of working with the company, they have conducted a full study of analytical control schedules, identified the most labour-intensive processes and types of laboratory analysis, and taken part in a poster session in July.

International students are beginning to arrive at HSE University for the new academic year. Among them are students from Indonesia. Some of them even had a chance to take their parents on a tour of the campus. How does one become an HSE University student? What do the university’s venues have to offer? What is it like to live in Moscow? The new arrivals shared their first impressions with the HSE News Service.