5 May, 2014. The Rating Agency “Expert RA” has made the third annual rating of Russian universities. The purpose of ranking of higher education institutions is to assess the ability of universities to provide graduates with a high quality of knowledge, skills and abilities proceed from conditions for its acquiring and from results of its application. The rating basis includes statistical indicators and large-scale surveys of 7,5 thousand respondents: employers, representatives of academic and scientific communities, students and graduates.

The majority of higher education institutions, which was inside the top ten universities of Russia in 2013, have managed to retain their positions according to the results of the current rating. MEPhI improved its ranking from the last year's 5th to the 4th position.

The main conclusion of the research is that competition between the leading universities of Russia increases rapidly. In these highly competitive conditions improvement in even several indicators of the University does not guarantee growth in the rating. Now the principle expressed in the work of L. Carroll is applicable to Russian institutions of higher education as never before: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”.