This research aimed to analyze the current trends in the digital transformation of educational institutions. The investigation lasted from November 2019 to May 2020 and was based on three higher educational institutions (HEIs) in the Russian Federation: Belgorod State University, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and Kutafin Moscow State Law University. The number of respondents enrolled was 420 people. In an attempt to bring together views and experiences of different actors of the educational sector, three individual online surveys were conducted among administrative staff, teachers, and students of mentioned educational institutions. All respondents were provided with questionnaires aimed at identifying current trends in educational paradigm transformation and studying the extent to which digital strategies are applied in the process of HEIs' development. The detailed analysis of survey outcomes allowed indicating positive and negative trends in digitalization of educational processes from the perspective of university administrative staff, teachers, and students. Positive trends were: ensuring the availability of higher education through the implementation of full-fledged distance learning courses; enhancing the students' experience through the introduction of innovative teaching methods; providing open access to educational resources and research results; opportunity to participate in global "open science" initiatives; and reduction of higher education cost to ensure its accessibility and mass scale. The barriers to the digital transformation of the educational sphere were: lack of funds for the implementation of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy; resistance to changes on the part of the staff; and a low level of confidence in technological solutions used in teaching practice. As a result, the conducted investigation uncovered the essence of digital transformation in the institutional structures of the higher education sector. However, given that digitalization is a complex process affecting most spheres of socio-economic interaction, consideration of only positive and negative digital transformation trends is insufficient to thoroughly analyze global digital shifts and the formation of national vectors for digital society development.

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This study analyzes the process of cultural and civilizational identity development in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine. The definition of a cultural-civilizational identity as a kind of macrosocial supra-ethnic identity is presented. A cultural-civilizational identity is a structure of self-consciousness that connects subjectively realized and experienced values, state and cultural symbols, attitudes, relations, assessments and norms of a supra-ethnic community. They prove that in order to understand the content of cultural and civilizational identity development in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine, the concept of political and cultural delimitation has a heuristic potential according to which the process of definition and delineation of adjacent geopolitical entity. This process consists in the development and distribution of stable notions about the specifics of their political and cultural systems among population. According to the materials of empirical study conducted in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine, (n = 1000, 2015), it is argued that the identification processes in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine do not primarily stimulate the restoration of the former high level of social space homogeneity. They separate more than unite the people of the borderland close by their cultural characteristics. The concept of identification process monitoring is proposed in the border regions of Russia and Ukraine.

This article discusses changes that actually occur in the Russian Higher Education in the process of reform. The thesis that the functioning of the educational system increasingly detects formal rationality, not focused on the senses, and their imitation. It is noted that the Russian system of higher education refers to a specific type, which can be rightly defined as "culturecentric". This type have a number of traits: dominance conception of education as a complex of practices, with the aim of translation of cultural codes from older to younger generations; the idea of the sacred nature of the educational process as a student-deterministic; installation of universality, according to which university graduates must be not only professionally prepared and fully developed; priority of content and semantic aspects of education in relation to formal, often even to the detriment of the latter; belief in the special position of the higher education sector, as well as education in general in relation to other spheres of activity. It is emphasized that the logical consequence of the transition to the formal rationality becomes a management simulation in which real values and meanings are replaced and replaced by a formal reproduction of operations and procedures, followed by their demonstration, declaration and decoration. It is proved that the main source of formal rationalization is a corporate bureaucracy. What evidence, unwarranted expansion of the administrative apparatus of the university, which is a logical consequence of the formalization of the educational process, excessive standardization and regulation of educational activities, as well as the deformation of the controlling function.

Insufficient conceptualization regarding the analysis of social risks of the educational space digitalization in universities and the ambiguity of their initial prerequisites necessitate the study of this problem. The article analyzes the prerequisites for social risks of the educational space digitalization in regional universities, based on the provisions on their normativity for modern social reality, transformation into a permanent factor of the functioning of complex sociobiotechnical systems, ambivalence of risk, the need for risk genesis process regulation. The well-established statement “risk = uncertainty” is considered, and the author′s own vision of the social risks of the educational space digitalization in regional universities is formulated. It is emphasized that the process of digitalization leads to mass reproduction of uncertainties and, as a consequence, social risks at all levels of social self-organization, including universities, which are open to the external environment. The author describes the specific uncertainties that digitalization creates at the level of the education system and individual universities. The author’s definition of the social risks of the educational space digitalization in a regional university is given as the awareness of its actors of the probability of events that determine the deviation from their goals due to the introduction of digital technologies and encouraging subjects to take actions that do not guarantee the achievement of the planned result. The necessity of risk genesis management as a regulatory influence combining administrative regulation and self-regulation of subjects and counterparties of the educational space of universities in order to identify and use positive opportunities of social risks of digitalization and exclude negative consequences is substantiated. The idea of “risk making” is proposed as an activity to identify and use the constructive potential of social risks of the educational space digitalization and minimize their negative consequences.