Regional Universities Facing Dilemma? Between Scylla of Globalization and Charybdis of Localization

This paper focuses on dilemmas that modern university faces as an educational, research  and  social institute. The basic challenge is produced by the intersection of two major processes. The first is related to the trend of internalization of education and research, while the second is localization, understood as a turn of University to the needs of a local or regional community. These two processes are not necessarily perfectly reconcilable. Thus, modern Universities might require to define their own strategy towards both. To what extent this dichotomy is real? How the two processes are perceived and dealt with by Russian and foreign universities? Finally, what role an institutional and a resource environment play in there choices? The study was performed on the basis of a comparatively-oriented case-study: a case of Russian classical regional university (Perm State National Research University) is placed in  a  context  of  institutional change practices and development strategies of Western and Russian universities. The results of  this research demonstrate that the distinctive feature of Russian universities (especially regional national research universities) is a weak reflection of their strategic choices. Their selection of priorities is rather random, while institutional transformation is unsystematic. In European case, two aforementioned trends supplement each other even though internationalization and commercialization seem to play the leading role. On the other hand, Russian example shows that universities’ pursuit of commercialization and internationalization has lesser impact on the local surrounding spaces development. Moreover, although Russian and European universities face similar challenges and undergo similar institutional transformations, there are differences between  their  resource  and  institutional  environments,  resulting  in  different outcomes. Russian universities are forced to not only catch up, but to choose the imposed  "survival strategy".

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