Higher education is an essential element in developing a country's innovative potential, and this has been recognised as such by politicians and those who work in the industry. However, one of the blights of contemporary Russian society, corruption threatens the potential of the next generation. Corruption has permeated all levels of society, including the education sector. It is having a profound effect and is replicating the physical and psychological conditions. This article details the scale and nature of corruption in higher education in Russia, and offers some insight into the various proposals that seek to change the situation for the better.

The ongoing socio-economic and socio-cultural changes bring about significant alterations in the social structure of society and the institution of education. This calls for in-depth research to predict the further development of social processes and determine effective methods of managing them at the society and regional levels. The employment of university graduates has essentially acquired the characteristics of a new social process after the abolition of obligatory employment by distribution. The emergence of new statuses (for example, mixed statuses), in which university graduates often find themselves being unemployed or working outside their professions, has become an acknowledged social fact. The interest of many sociologists in this problem is also due to changes in the functions of social institutions, including the institution of education, an important part of which is higher education. The study focuses on the importance of such obstacles as contradictions between the qualification programs, teaching methods, graduates’ competencies, employers’ requirements for the same competencies and qualifications, the mismatch between the studied theory and practice, and the identification and justification of the main employment strategies for university graduates. The study objectives are pursued through descriptive data analysis and the qualitative approach with a questionnaire as the main data collection method. The study is conducted on a sample of 130 organization leaders. The aforementioned problems and shortcomings of Kazakh university graduates’ training are detected and analyzed using comparative analysis. In accordance with the specifics of the labor market, the authors identify the market, paternalistic, and traditional strategies of university graduates’ employment.   Received: 21 December 2021 / Accepted: 16 March 2022 / Published: 5 May 2022

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The paper shows that independent work of students in current conditions has acquired the status of one of the critical forms of organization of students' activities aimed at the development of graduates' readiness for permanent self-development as a necessary condition for successful adaptation in a continuously changing educational, professional, and social environment. The structural components of the independent work of students as a type of educational activity carried out by students as indirect management from teachers are also revealed. The pedagogical conditions for increasing efficiency of independent work of students also include a clear definition of places, goals, and objectives of independent work in the structure of educational process; use of methods for motivation of students to perform independent work; design and application of a system of successive complicating level of problems of competence-oriented educational tasks; as well as creation of information and educational environment.

<p>The article analyzes the prospects of work search by the graduates of higher educational institutions across the post-Soviet space using the example of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Currently, the problem of the employment selection strategy among the graduates of the post-Soviet space countries remains as a priority. Graduated experts at the labor market experience a complex of institutional problems: a small number of jobs, bureaucratization, inadequate knowledge for vacant posts, the lack of infrastructure at higher education institutions for the interaction with enterprises. All this leads to the dissatisfaction of specialists with their professional and social status, to the choice of a work place which does not correspond an acquired specialty, or to the use of personal ties of their family to the detriment of their own desires and qualifications, and, consequently, to the reproduction of disproportions in the economy. As a research in the field of economic sociology, the article relies on conflictological and structural-functional paradigms. A questionnaire is used to reveal the research topic. The objectives of the study are the following ones: the problems of graduate employment and the ways of their solution in Kazakhstan. The result of the conducted research showed that the successful adaptation of graduates at the labor market makes it necessary to develop and introduce effective educational programs in the teaching process, including practical-oriented disciplines that give the opportunity to obtain knowledge required by employers. The students of senior courses should study practical courses, preferably on practice bases, they should actively participate in the development and the implementation of specialized projects, grants, in scientific competitions, conferences, which will allow them to develop creative thinking, to understand the content of future profession, to master the basic theoretical and practical material.</p>