ABSTRACT
Ryazan has been the home of some noteworthy literary and scholarly figures in Russian history. The noted psychologist Ivan Pavlov taught in the schools of Ryazan. This chapter examines how one Russian university is adapting to a changing external environment. It draws upon resource dependency theory to examine how administrators at Ryazan State Pedagogical University (RSPU) are responding to political, economic and societal changes around them. The chapter uses definitions of markets and market transactions to investigate the emerging relationships between students and to a lesser extent their families. The Ryazan region has provided about 2% of the university’s budget in the form of interest-free loans. While this may sound inconsequential, an interest-free loan is a substantial gift in the current Russian economic context. In the last 5 years, RSPU has developed a series of informational brochures about the academic programs of the university.
