Russian Flagship Universities’ Incomes: Dynamics and Tendencies

This research article aims at identifying the impact of establishing flagship universities on the dynamics and structure of their income. The study is based on analyzing the growth rate of total income and income per 1 scientific and pedagogical worker in 2019–2020 as compared to 2015 reference year (taking inflation into account), together with finding out changes in the share of off-budget revenues, revenues from research and development work. There are used standard techniques of descriptive statistics, paired Student’s t-test for related samples, Mann-Whitney U-test, and cluster analysis. The total income of all flagship universities has grown, but, however, show deeper differentiation. The group of leaders have increased their revenues by 0,5–1,0 billion rubles in 2015 prices, but a number of universities face stagnated or declining income. The COVID-19 pandemic has had little or no impact on income differentiation and dyna mics. The by-income stratification per 1 scientific and pedagogical worker is lower, which indicates a personnel decrease in a number of clusters with stable or declining income. Neither institution’s joining the first or the second wave of flagship universities nor the availability of special federal funding has a statistically significant relationship with income dynamics. At the same time, the majority of flagship universities get the same stable share of income from research activities and did not decrease their dependence on the budget system. This indicates either the absence of major chan gesor the simultaneous growth of income from research activities and additional funding like federal programs, projects, grants. Not all flagship universities have been able to increase revenues, so the leaders’ experience requires further analysis. The results of the study may possibly be of interest for managers of both flagship and other categories of universities, as well as for those who are going to substantiate management decisions within the latest Priority-2030 program.