On Possible Reasons for University Resource Base Decline

Mikhail Lisyutkin - Research Fellow at the Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya St., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: mlisyutkin@hse.ru A number of national higher education systems have been facing consistent resource decline lately, which cannot but affect the resource base of particular universities. Importantly, while some universities suffer from resource decline, others demonstrate an improvement in or expansion of their resources. This is where a question, both theoretically and practically essential, is raised about the reasons for the dynamics of a university's resource base and its specific components. The article explores the Russian higher education system as well as particular Russian public universities in terms of resource base dynamics. Financial, intellectual and infrastructural resources are analyzed as components of the university's resource base. As a result, a group of universities characterized by the declining resource base has been identified and described in detail. Interviews with the representatives of those universities as well as a review of relevant foreign studies have provided the basis for the identification of the possible reasons for the resource base decline of particular universities, which include organizational, contextual and technological factors.