Russian university bureaucracy - terra incognita for sociology of education

Abstract

The authors argue that in contemporary Russian universities, the bureaucracy has turned into the most influential corporation, and insist on the sociological analysis of its status, positive and negative consequences of formation and evolution. Despite many studies of this phenomenon, the university bureaucracy remains terra incognita for sociology of education - many fundamental issues remain unclear: why in the meritocratic and initially humanitarian university, practices of formal rationality with the focus on normative acts and instructions (rationality for its own sake) prevail; how to explain that even the obvious inconsistency of many bureaucratic practices does not lead to discrediting the bureaucratic system, but, on the contrary, contributes to its extended reproduction; why many specialists find the results of the university management optimization based on a bureaucratic approach doubtful. The majority of sociological works on the university bureaucratization provide answers to these questions in the form of admitting the current situation, but there is no causal analysis of the university bureaucracy development and evolution. The article considers possible causes of the current situation: the lack of a systematic approach to the university bureaucratization, its study mainly in the context of the higher education reforms; uncritical reproduction of the classical theories of bureaucracy, which need changes according to the contemporary realities; the lack of works on the status of the university bureaucracy under the digital transformation of society; the barrier of institutionalized hypocrisy; servility relationships between sociologists and university managers. The identified problems require empirical verification and discussion in the professional sociological community.