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How did Russia, in a twenty-year period, switch from a system of higher education that, exclusively public, was steered by the state during the Soviet era, to a system with an inextricable mixture of private and public rationales? To answer this question, focus is placed on adaptation strategies adopted by academic establishments facing a sharp drop in public funding during the 1990s. These strategies resulted in them gaining greater autonomy from their leading authorities; and it weakened the public sector’s boundaries. Thanks to oil rent, which has been increasing since the mid-2000s, the federal government has intervened in academia and adopted new regulations for the relations between academic institutions and the public authorities that exercise oversight; but it has not tried to reduce the public sector’s “porosity.”