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The objective of the paper is to discuss the most crucial problem, related to "winding down" of the Russian Liberal Arts education due to its economic inefficiency. The methodology includes the descriptive scientific-research method, which involves the analysis of scientific sources, official provisions, mass-media publications and the students' questionnaire. The authors came to the following conclusions: 1. The model of education, which is guided by the logic of economic growth, and not by the logic of human development, leads to a general dehumanization of education and society. 2. The process of education "dehumanizing" is manifested in the following destructive trends: pragmatic utility and convenience of gaining knowledge; the dominance of technical knowledge and the transfer of humanitarian disciplines into optional courses; the advance of online education; the imperfection of university lecturers' ratings and their transformation into a bureaucratic evaluation system; new types of inequality in education. 3. In Russia, the above-mentioned trends are aggravated by the abnormal establishment of market economy; the verticalization of power and the lack of professionalism in university management; social sphere underfunding; the aggressive implementation of the Bologna system. 4. The current crisis in education is accompanied by the large-scale emigration of gifted students and lecturers. The authors recommend to consider the University as a classical "home" of formation, preservation and transfer of culture; online courses should be seen as a new format of teaching aids, as well as a technological tool for retraining and for people with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article author provides historical sociological analysis of changes in the system of higher education during the period from the second half of the 19th century until the 1930s in the Russian Empire and later on in the Soviet Union. By analyzing historical materials, legal acts and interpretations author also addresses two important questions of the sociology of education. First one is what role plays education in the forming of modern society. Second is how the higher education institutions in general and Universities in particular reflect the changes in the society and adjust to those changes and how state and government affect the education in general. The purpose of this article is to analyze the higher education system in Russia and its role in the life of Russian society from the second half of the 19th century to the 20s of the 20th century. As theoretical framework author uses modernization theory of Czech-British philosopher and social anthropologist, Ernest Gellner (1925-1995) and his idea of education as source of new universal high culture which forms modern societies. Another theory which is also used in the following research is the ideas of modern Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells and his ideas of the role modern universities play in Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]