Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2021 number

The study of the formation and development of the higher education system in the Russian Federation is a relevant research area. The development of experience of the domestic higher education has not lost its significance nowadays. In the modern period, when the national projects “Science” and “Education” are being implemented, the state policy should take into account the historical dynamics of this sphere’s evolution, which is most important for society. The regional aspect of the problem requires a more detailed study due to the prevailing historical features of the higher education system development and its branch specifics. The system of higher education in Siberia, that started to develop with the Tomsk University opening in 1888, went through several important stages. Historiography of the problem of the second half of the XX century can be conditionally divided into three groups: late 1950s - first half of 1980s; the second half of the 1980s - the early 1990s; early 1990s - nowadays. Despite the huge historiographic background on various problems of the higher education development, there are “gaps” in the literature on interpreting the individual chronological periods, which need to be studied. Thus, the analysis of the Siberian universities’ potential development in the post-Soviet period is mainly represented in the articles in encyclopedias and collective works on the history of individual regions of Siberia and the Far East. Period of the 1990s is reflected in a few papers by researchers devoted to individual problems of the domestic higher education development. Meanwhile, the permanent reform of the higher education system has led to significant changes in the structure of the regional university potential, and needs a comprehensive historical analysis. The article analyzes main transformations in the higher education system’s development in Siberia in the 1990s. This decade became a period of searching for new strategies to survive and develop universities in the context of the economic crisis, emerging sector of non-state higher education.