The Third Age Universities in Russian Higher Education: Problem Area

Продление деловой и социальной активности пожилых людей становится задачей государственного масштаба, и университеты третьего возраста являются заметным мировым феноменом непрерывного образования, работающим на ее решение. В предлагаемой исследовательской статье очерчивается проблемное поле российского опыта формирования и развития университетов третьего возраста на базе высших учебных заведений. Автором систематизированы и подвергнуты компаративному анализу собранные во вторичных источниках и из открытых данных на сайтах вузов разрозненные свидетельства об опыте работы высшей школы в указанном направлении. Ключевым результатом проведенного исследования является вывод о том, что действующие при вузах России университеты третьего возраста отстают от мировой практики и по масштабу деятельности, и по масштабу распространения инноваций. Даже при условии достаточного финансирования российские вузы почти не создают университетов третьего возраста, не определив для себя их перспектив; создавая же такие подразделения, вузы предлагают пожилым учащимся неформальное образование для приобретения ими общекультурных компетенций, содержательно повторяя программы центров социального обслуживания населения. В статье обосновывается важность теоретической и практической проработки российской модели университетов третьего возраста на базе отечественных вузов и предлагается ряд управленческих решений. Главные из них – переосмысление роли и задач университетов третьего возраста и их открытие на базе ведущих высших учебных заведений. Стратегия создания в образовательных организациях высшего образования таких подразделений направлена как на завоевание нового целевого рынка, так и на выполнение вузами «третьей миссии» – миссии обеспечения равного доступа к получению качественного образования вне любых барьеров, в том числе барьеров возрастных.Prolongation of business and social activity of older people is becoming a national-scale task, and Universities of the Third Age (U3A) are a noticeable global phenomenon of lifelong education, aimed at solving this problem. This paper outlines the problematic field of the Russian experience in the development of U3A on the basis of higher educational institutions. The author systematizes and subjects to comparative analysis the scattered evidence of the Russian experience of U3A as a form of the HE activity in the market of educational services, collected in secondary sources and from open data on the websites of universities. As key results this paper draws to conclusions that U3A in Russian universities are a new concept lagging world practices in terms of the scale and diffusion. Russian universities, even with sufficient funding, hardly create U3As struggling define U3As prospective for themselves. While creating U3As, they offer older students non-formal education aiming to create general cultural competencies, and repeat in this approach to the education content the Social Service Centre. This study allows to prove the importance of theoretical and practical development of the Russian model of U3A in universities, as well as to propose several management solutions. The main solutions are to rethink the role and functions of the U3A and to create them as divisions of leading universities to fulfil the strategic tasks of their development. U3A in the universities aim both at a new target market and at the implementation of the ‘third mission’ by the universities to ensure equal access to quality education beyond any, including age-related barriers.В статье освещены результаты исследования, проведенного в рамках проекта «Анализ целевых рынков образовательных услуг университета» по заказу РГСУ. Автор выражает глубокую признательность директору Центра исследований современного детства НИУ ВШЭ Е. В. Сивак за ценные замечания, полученные в процессе работы над публикацией.This study was conducted within the framework of the project «Analysis of the target markets of educational services of the University» commissioned by the RSSU. I thank Elizaveta V. Sivak, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Childhood Research at the Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, for the suggestions made during the work on this paper

Democracy, protest and public sphere in Russia after the 2011–2012 anti-government protests: digital media at stake

The 2011–2012 Russian protest mobilisations were largely enabled by the rise of social networks. Social and technological advancements paired to pave the way for the ‘biggest protests since the fall of USSR’. Ubiquitous and uncensored social media facilitated the networking and mobilisation for this protest activity: Liberal masses were able to share and discuss their grievances, unite and coordinate online for the offline protest. The digitally savvy protest public developed to confront the government, which appeared to be astonished by the scale of protest. Those mobilisations marked an important gap between the government’s conception of the society and the real state of resistance. This article studies three main hypotheses regarding the potential of the protest movement in Russia. The hypotheses were drawn from recent sociological, political and media studies on Russian resistance. Current research aims to contribute to the debate from the digital media perspective. It therefore evaluates three main assumptions: Digital media have the potential to empower, dependent upon the relevant political, social and economic factors; digital media isolates protest publics and therefore may be more useful for the government than the resistance; and recent censorship of digital media communication signals a tightening of both formal and informal restrictions against opposition and protest politics. This article uses theoretical and factual evidence on the limitations of democracy and the public sphere and conceptualises the government’s management of resistance in Russia during and after the 2011–2012 protests. It studies how the hybrid political regime in Russia balances restrictions on freedom of speech with strengthened state propaganda and how it mediates media oppression and invites self-censorship. Finally, it examines how the state communication watchdog has recently focused its attention at the digital realm. This move confirms the importance of the online protest communication for the Russian political environment. Yet the state’s acknowledgement of digital political resistance may lead to further oppression and curbing of this emerging component of Russian politics

Influencers on the Russian Twitter: Institutions vs. people in the discussion on migrants

With the emergence of discussion platforms like Twitter, the hopes rose that computer-mediated public sphere would become more even in access to discussion than mass-mediatized public sphere of the late 20th century. Scholars have argued that it will eventually form an ‘opinion crossroads’ where conflicts would be discussed by all the parties involved. But today, existing research provides mixed evidence on whether ordinary users, rather than mainstream media and institutional actors, can become influencers in discussions on current issues, e.g. relations between host and migrant communities. We focus on the Twitter discussion about an inter-ethnic conflict in Moscow’s Biryuliovo district in 2013 and aim at defining who were its real influencers by reconstructing the discussion’s web graph, as well as analyzing and juxtaposing its metrics to figures indicating user activity. Our results show that, despite hyperactivity of media accounts, they were largely absent as deliberative influencers, but the place of influencers was occupied by politicized (nationalist and liberal) accounts, rather by eyewitness reporters or public figures.This research has been supported in full by Russian Science Foundation (research grant 16-18-10125)