Higher education and regional elite formation in Russia

Ch. 14. P. 286–299.

Aleksei Egorov, Sergey Malinovskiy

Massification of higher education system may have changed significantly the roles of different types of universities in elite class formation. While the educational background of political elites in general has been widely studied, some questions have been left on the periphery. First, social sciences focus mostly on the political elite at the centres of power, with regional elites receiving little attention. Second, the analysis of political elites usually does not take into account the transformations of the higher education system – stratification of the sector, the differences between elite and mass segments, changes in the dominant fields of studies – and how these might intersect with elite formation. This chapter aims at addressing the above limitations. It focuses on the Russian regional political legislative elites. We analyse changes in their educational background and connect those changes to transformations in the higher education systems and larger society. 

Keywords: высшее образование, regional elites, региональные элиты, региональная власть, Russian Regional Elites, Post-communism Elites, элиты РФ, local elites, higher education, региональные органы власти, regional parliaments, локальная элита, российские политические элиты, contributions of higher education, постсоветское высшее образование, Contribution of universities to the development of society, политические элиты, Sociology of elites, political elites

Publication based on the results of: The results of university activities and their contribution to social developmen (2022)

In book

Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education: Knowledge for a Disordered World

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.