Deformation of University Management in Russia in the Context of the Implementation of Managerial Ideology

The article raises the issue of whether managerialism can improve the efficiency of university management. Managerial management was adopted in Russia to promote the intensification of three types of professional activity of teachers: research work, educational process and socialization of students. It was assumed that the more teachers perform various types of work within the framework of their professional employment, the more the efficiency of management will grow. For these purposes, universities began to function as a quasi-market corporation, in which each actor had their own personal KPI. Its implementation and subsequent growth of indicators were considered as a guarantee of increasing managerial efficiency. The authors express the opinion that such an approach is erroneous in relation to such types of activities where flow assessment of quality is impossible. It is an unsuccessful example of the transfer to higher education of those practices that have developed in commercial corporations. In this regard, the authors put forward a hypothesis according to which Russian universities under managerial management have partially lost their traditional goals: to teach a profession, create scientific innovations, and introduce students to culture. To confirm this hypothesis, a universal model of effective university management was developed. Four empirical indicators were defined on its basis: 1) clear articulation of goals; 2) provision of sufficient resources to achieve goals; 3) reliable system of control over the use of resources; 4) social significance of the manufactured product. A survey of university teachers in six regions of the south of Russia (sample population - 849 respondents) showed that managerial management unreasonably commercializes the professional activities of teachers, that the overwhelming majority of employees of educational organizations do not have sufficient resources to fulfill their KPIs, that there is mass falsification and imitation of the results of professional activity, that the academic community has lost its subjectivity, is under pressure from university administrations and, therefore, is unable to perform the function of proper control over the quality of educational and scientific activities. A general conclusion is made according to which under the conditions of managerial management the goals of universities have ceased to be achieved. Consequently, from an economic point of view, state financing of the overwhelming majority of Russian universities seems to be an unprofitable and unpromising undertaking.