March activity

The staff of the Center of Youth Studies Yana Krupets, Alena Kravtsova and Anastasia Sablina address the Third Congress* of Social Sciences teachers  of the Northwestern Federal district of the Russian Federation

March 25, 2017 St. Petersburg campus of National Research University "Higher School of Economics" held the third Congress of the teachers of Social Sciences of the Northwestern Federal district of the Russian Federation "Social studies: resources of educational partnership".

The purpose of the Third Congress is to analyze the possibility of Higher school of Economics to interact with the secondary schools on the definition and implementation of promising ways to improve the quality of education in high schools using holistic-activity approach in Social sciences, maintaining a dialogue and exchange of experience between representatives of different regions of the Northwestern Federal, expanding interregional cooperation.

Congress organizers hoped to draw conclusions about sucessful tools of the interaction between school and University which are already used and which can be used in the short term.

Next types of participants were invited: teachers and heads of educational institutions of the North-Western regions of Russia; teachers and heads of qualification improvement centers in the field of education; representatives of educational managment, scientists and specialists in different Social sciences.

There were 6 problems and the 5 subject areas in the framework of the Congress: history; political science; law; economics; philosophy.

The staff of the Center for Youth Studies presented the results of the project named "Study of educational preferences and the election of applicants and students of the HSE – Saint-Petersburg"** in the framework of the section "Successful graduate",  implemented this year for the third time. The theme of the speech was "Sociological analysis of strategies for the selection of University entrants (for example,  in HSE - Saint Petersburg)".

The main finding of the 3 years research was the fact that we are now seeing a "new applicant", who takes responsibility not only on the process of searching university, but also choosing it for admission.

The main features of universitiy selection by enrolee:

The image of the institution: education quality (high passing scores and complexity in learning), and the representation of the University as a modern, innovative and non-classical.

Meaningful benefits: interesting and "strong" curicullum, qualified teaching staff, the involvement to the global science, internship and study exchange opportunities, exciting extracurricular activities.

Organizational benefits: well organized admission process, comfortable website, social media presence (one of the main sources of information for future students), alternative enrollment opportunities (for example, by results of the academic competitions), educational discounts, the military faculty.

Also in the framework of the section was planned:

· to assess the social and educational image of modern entrants;

· to get acquainted with the mechanism of the faculty and university choice by graduates;

· to participate in social and professional expertise of the managment of the competitive social project "Successful graduate";

· to explore the possibilities of software tools to analyze information on higher education using Internet.

*The congress of Social sciences teachers held annually to discuss the main issues of socio-economic education, identify and promote the best practices and reach agreement of the professional community in improvement of teaching process.

**Project participants - Krupets Yana Nikolaevna (head of project), Alena Kravtsova, Knyazeva Svetlana, Sablina Anastasia, Svyatoslav Polyakov.