Some 503 universities were selected for evaluation. Non-governmental universities, branches, institutes located outside Russia and those that are reorganized were not taken into account.

There were three groups of respondents: students, their parents and university lecturers evaluated the quality of university activities in terms of their experience; experts evaluated websites of universities. The total amount of respondents is over 108,000 from all over Russia.

The survey was provided by the Social Guide project supported by the Government. Its main target is informing society about activities of civil services. The polls made by Social Guide’s experts help to evaluate the quality of educational, medical, housing and other centers.

The survey resulted in a list of the top 67 Russian universities including ITMO University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow Engineering Physics Institute MEPhI, Higher School of Economics, and Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.

"The specialists of the Social Guide conducted such a survey for the first time. We understand that it is only the first step, as it takes time to "teach" representatives of higher education to express their opinion publicly and also teach university officials to take their opinions into account so as to develop higher education institutions," notes Natalia Tiurina, head of the Social Guide project.