Higher education: paradoxes of public administration

The modern state of the higher education governance is characterized by the reinforced supervisory function of the government and the increased accountability of universities for their results. These conditions do not inspire the democratization of the higher education, on the contrary it is getting more formalized. The reforms initiated to include the Russian higher education into Bologna process resulted in the creation of a number of paradoxes, which describe the public administration of the education today. The article focuses on some of the problems faced by universities in the process of the educational reforms which caused the institutional crisis of the university sector.