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 "culture-centric". 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.