Russian Universities in Domestic and International Ratings: from the Fungibility of Scientometrics to the Evaluation of Development Quality

The article describes the trend data for Russian universities in domestic and international ratings. It provides sociological commentary on the project by the Moscow International University Ranking (MosIUR) called “The Three University Missions”. It employs the results from monitoring domestic universities between 2015–2017 by the Expert research center. The authors raise general questions regarding the problems of rating universities, and proposes the discussion of recommendations on the optimal balance between three parameters (groups of indicators) of MosIUR. The article describes the trajectory in domestic and international ratings of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI – a university which meets to the highest worldwide educational standards and, along with other national research universities of a technical or polytechnic character, remains a unique driver of development for the domestic education system, leading the way towards the optimal use of human capital in education. It has earned its place in domestic ratings, and regularly appears in international ratings with few understandable difficulties in evaluating its status and potential. Emphasis is made of fact that high-quality education and universities’ engagement in scientific and research activities involves mutually strengthened progress based on reciprocity.