What role do supervisory boards play at Russian state universities?
Anonymous Independent Researcher
Photo: Supervisory boards likely serve as a means of legitimizing the elite. Photo by Alexander Lyashkov on Unsplash
Over the past decade, the Russian education system has adopted a host of managerial tools from the West, among them supervisory boards, an example of “New Public Management” practices.
Officially, the boards control finances, approve audit reports, and monitor use of university property. In reality, they do something else as well.
Examining the activities of firms represented on the supervisory boards of Russian state universities demonstrates how global governance models spread, are implemented, and are adapted to non-Western contexts.
“Steering at a Distance”
I will start with the formal picture.
Russian state universities with special status—for example, the National Research University (NRU), federal universities, and Project 5-100 universities (2012–2020)—are required to have supervisory boards. These boards are assigned typical functions:
- reviewing financial plans
- overseeing major transactions
- approving annual reports
Members of these boards are predominantly public figures: politicians, businesspeople, and academics. University rectors are generally excluded from membership.
Overall, the boards appear to be a classic example of “steering at a distance”—the state grants universities a degree of autonomy while retaining control.
The University-Business Alliance
Why should corporations be on university advisory boards?
It can be assumed that universities need to cooperate with businesses in order to bring their curricula into line with the demands of the labor market, create student internships and talent pools, attract financing for infrastructure and research, and strengthen regional economic integration.
In turn, businesses need to cooperate with universities in order to gain strategic advantages, increase their visibility and reputation, demonstrate a commitment to social development, and potentially impact skill development and research programs.
In any case, it is a mutually beneficial relationship.
How Boards Actually Work
What do the boards actually do? Or at least, what information about this is made publicly available?
For my research, I analyzed the output of the official news sources of 46 Russian universities for the period 2020–2025. I tracked mentions of private companies and their representatives who serve as members of supervisory boards at state universities.
What did the data reveal?
First, companies that are members of the board are consistently mentioned more frequently in
university communications than similar large corporations without representatives on the board. To make these size comparisons, we relied on a 2025 list of corporate giants ranked by market capitalization published on the Forbes Russia website.
Second, companies on the board almost never appear in the contexts outlined in the official documents regulating their activities. In particular, university news articles contained no information on how board members review audit reports.
Instead, the firms appear in announcements regarding educational programs, joint research projects, partnership agreements, and job fairs. In other words, while the formal mandate of supervisory boards relates primarily to financial oversight, their presence in university-related public discourse is focused on collaboration.
Local Functions
We observe an interesting combination of a borrowed form of governing body and its locally rooted function.
In the Russian context, the university supervisory board serves as a connecting link—a mechanism for maintaining ties between the university and influential external actors from the business sector. In 2014, Minister D. Livanov stated that supervisory boards should assume responsibility for the successes and failures of higher education institutions, thereby assigning them additional tasks not explicitly outlined in formal documents.
The boards bear little resemblance to an instrument of genuine external oversight. For starters, university news sources contain no information regarding the details of the companies’ activities within the framework of these supervisory boards. Such information is likely withheld intentionally.
Nevertheless, a company’s membership of the board is directly linked to the digital footprint they leave on the life of the university.
Preliminary Conclusions
It is useful to know this for three reasons.
First, it adds to the debate surrounding the critique of “symbolic governance.”
Scholars note that Russian supervisory boards often appear to be mere facades. Their members are high-ranking officials or enterprise executives with limited time, and meetings are infrequent. Their mandatory powers are limited (see Anna Gryaznova, “Supervisory Boards in Russian Universities: A Development Instrument or Another Tool of State Control?” Higher Education 76 (2018): 35–50).
Supervisory boards likely serve to legitimize elites without making a substantial contribution to the development of an educational institution. My findings point to certain nuances. Board membership is linked to real, recurring, and publicly visible interaction between the university and the business sector. If we evaluate governance solely based on formal decision-making authority, we overlook the fact that these boards can play a significant role in fostering connections.
Second, in the Russian system, where the business elite and political elite are closely intertwined, and university autonomy remains highly limited—often existing only on paper—the supervisory board becomes a measure of organizational proximity.
A company executive serving on the board does not necessarily “run” the university. However, the appearance of the firm’s logo on a joint educational program signals something of value: access, trust, and alignment with national priorities.
This situation is not unique to Russia. Studies of university boards in Hungary, Poland, and even some Western European countries show that external members often perform legitimizing functions alongside their formal duties.
We should probably stop asking whether the pieces of advice are “real” or “symbolic.” Instead, we should ask: What work do they actually perform?
Third, most studies of university boards are based on interviews or surveys—members’ self-reports regarding what they believe they do. Such data are valuable but often subject to bias.
An analysis of university news offers a different angle for study. It shows that institutions prefer to report on their external relationships.
This information is incomplete, as internal discussions remain unseen. However, it reveals what universities themselves deem worthy of public announcement. Announcements shape reputations, signal priorities, and build networks. In this sense, public communication is not merely a byproduct of management; it is an integral part of management.
Hidden Thoughts
One should not assume that the formal competencies of supervisory boards reflect the actual weight of the governing body. The functions themselves are quite standard and do not differ significantly across universities. To understand a board’s influence, one must examine its composition, the backgrounds of its members, and how the university speaks about them.
One should also exercise caution when transplanting governance models from different political systems. For instance, a university supervisory board in the Netherlands—where autonomy is high—would not function with the same effectiveness in a system where the government is the dominant player.
Publicizing the council’s activities is a form of institutional work. When a university repeatedly mentions a supervisory board member’s company in its news updates, it is not merely reporting on events; it is building and strengthening relationships.
These mentions also signal to a wide audience, ”Look, we’re top-tier; we have Gazprom or Alfa-Bank on our board”—which is in turn linked to the educational institution’s prestige.
* * *
My conclusions do not at all imply that supervisory boards at Russian universities should be considered merely decorative.
These boards have found themselves caught between an imported model of financial oversight and the local reality of elite connections and goal-oriented cooperation.
Borrowed management models are rarely imported exactly as they were in their original form. Rather, they are adapted, reinterpreted, and sometimes subtly repurposed. Understanding how and why this happens is the task of comparative research in higher education.
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