Importance The article analyzes the institutional reforms in the Russian system of University education and related informal institutional effects in terms of their impact on the effective functioning of the system. Objectives The purpose of the article is to systematize and interpret the informal institutional effects accompanying the formal institutional changes in the course of the reform of the University education system in Russia, as well as reason their causality. The article is structured using a correlation of the major target policies of educational reforms and related integrated institutional effects. Methods The methodology includes descriptive, evolutionary and causal institutional analyses, and a method of participant observation of institutional changes. Results The article reveals the basic cause of institutional ineffectiveness of Russia's University system which is the wrong logic of institutional design in the reform of higher education, resulting in many transplant and simulated dysfunctions of the Universities. Conclusions The article concludes that institutional problems of the Russian higher education relate not so much to "failures of the State" in formulating effective regulation policies as to their combination with "failures of the Universities" engaged in passive and adaptive strategies for decades, and implicitly renounced the status of civil society actors.
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