The master’s degree is an obligatory stage for those who are planning to enter PhD. That is why it should have a clear academic track. Embedding the master’s degree in the academic track allows universities to sum up their efforts to support young scientists. There is an urgent need to support scientific centers in Russian universities. When the universities are competing for academic leadership, academic tracks become the ground for the development strategies.Previous researches showed that most students were ready to choose an academic track when they were master’s students. Thus, the academic track starts long before entering the doctoral programs. The study results reveal that master’s students do not have an opportunity to build an individual academic track within “hybrid” master’s programs. The Russian master’s degree programs shortly involve young researchers in projects, and this applies to all types of universities, including the research ones. The structure and ways of involving students in science do not differ in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Master’s students who choose academic track do it without changing the major program. However, this trend doesn’t cover all the students. Master’s students use academic tracks to upgrade their professional skills for the further career but not at university or scientific institution.

The system of master education in Russia in now being transforming. It is influenced by the global trends in higher education and stakeholders’ needs. The goal of this research is to find out the substantial transformations in Russian magistracy and to underline the main trends at the current stage. To achieve the goal, the relevant literature and regulations were reviewed. Besides, we used the results of all-Russian survey “Russian Master’s Early Growth” devoted to Russian magistracy, the winner of the program “Scholarship program by Vladimir Potanin”.The research gives the analyses of transformations of magistracy in Russia in three vectors: changes in educational paths, staffing and design of master programs. The results of the research can be used by university management while designing master’s programs.

This paper presents the results of studying non-state actors’ institutional support for masters’ teachers. The authors analyze the tracks of the introduction and a «life cycle» of the master’s educational product created with the support of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation – the only non-commercial organization in Russia which supports students and professors at the master’s level. The study shows that the support for masters’ teachers makes a significant contribution to changing the role of this degree in higher education. There are outlined the long-term effects of supporting masters’ teachers, which are supposed to create an environment for developing talents, improving the educational results of master students, teachers’ advanced training, and integrating master programs into university’s and region’s strategic goals of development. For higher education researchers, for teachers and managers of master programs, for university administrators, and for higher education transformation decision makers in Russia.

The article is dedicated to the assessment of the correlation between the values of self-expression and survival among modern Russian students. The relevance of this topic is determined by the need to understand how to change the higher education system so that it correlates with the values of modern students and applicants, meets their expectations and needs. The article examines two aspects of the transformation of higher education: the institutional limitations of the modernisation of higher education and the value orientations of modern Russian students. Value orientations were operationalised using the approach of R. Inglehart and K. Welzel, based on the dichotomy of values of self-expression and survival, and institutional conditions - through the reproduction by the higher education system of the institutional trap “path-dependence”, to overcome which "critical mass" of subjects with dominant values of self-expression is required. The main research question was whether Russian bachelors have developed values of self-expression. The empirical basis of the study was the data of a mass survey of Russian students of 19 universities within the framework of the project "The Birth of a Russian Master's Degree" with the support of the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation. The research toolkit included a number of categories reflecting the meanings that students use when analysing the reasons for choosing a university, the direction of training and learning outcomes. One of these categories is the category of choice (of the university and field of study). The data obtained indicate that when answering the question about the reasons for choosing a university and the direction of study, there are, on average, two and a half times more students who chose the values of self-expression than those who are clearly focused on the values of survival. This suggests that, firstly, the importance of the values of emancipation (freedom of choice and development) in higher education is growing. Secondly, the potential for changes at the value level is accumulated in groups of students with different cultural capital - that is, we can talk about universal tendencies among the entire studied group. Thirdly, the choice of the direction of study turned out to be a more significant factor in the distribution of values than the choice of a university, that is, the motives for choosing a student are biased towards the content of their professional education in the first place, and the prestige of the university in the second place. Based on their analysis of the collected data, the authors come to the conclusion that modern Russian students are ready for meaningful changes in higher education. The only question is what answer to expect from the system.