Pricing Strategies of Russian State Universities

The paper analyzes the pricing strategies of Russian state universities for bachelor and specialist programs. The analysis is carried out by studying the ratio coefficients of the tuition fees and the funding standards for budget students. On the basis of 2016–2019 Monitoring of enrollment quality at Russian universities and Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education data, it is shown that Russian universities use three types of pricing strategies when attracting a certain contingent of fee-paying students. The first strategy is typical for the leaders of the Russian higher education market: their tuition fee is significantly higher than the funding standards for budget students, while the university’s market niche allows to consistently enroll fee-paying students with a high level of training. The second strategy is used by universities that are able to enroll the required number of fee-paying students with a good level of training on a competitive basis and have advantages at the local and cross-regional levels: tuition fee is approximately at the same level as the funding standards. The third strategy is used by non-selective universities, where the quality of the education allows to enroll fee-paying students only using tuition fees that are below the level of funding standards. The results of the analysis show that competitive universities with a higher level of financial capacity set tuition fees, which significantly exceed the funding standards. At the same time, universities with weak financial capacity and difficulties in fee-paying enrollment are prone to price dumping in violation of regulatory requirements.