Forming the identity of a regional university as a tool to manage its competitiveness

The concept of identity, originally used in relation to the human personality, comes to be actively applied to various social institutions, including HEIs. Nowadays, the competitive nature of a university’s funding makes a higher education institution’s identity formation a key factor in its competitiveness. Our review of the existing studies shows that at the moment there is a problem of poor knowledge on regional universities’ identity, especially in terms of its external component. The aim of our study is to identify the existing difficulties in regional university’s identity formation and to substantiate the directions for their solution. The methodological basis of our analysis is the theory of organizational identity. The definitions of a regional university and its identity are obtained using the content analysis method. Our classification of Russian universities made it possible to formulate criteria, which make it possible to identify a university beyond any special status. Our analysis of Russian HEIs’ financing shows that such universities face with a lack of funding and, accordingly, with the need to increase competitiveness through the formation of their identity. In the future, this problem will only intensify due to the influence of digitalization, which makes a university’s territorial proximity less important for the enrollees.