Over the last few decades, performance-based funding models of universities have been introduced and have made universities build and implement different strategies to enable them to compete and be viable in changing circumstances. In turn, national governments are focused on providing universities with more opportunities to run efficient programmes that advance higher education. This paper includes a detailed review of various taxonomies for structuring university. More importantly, it develops a typology of higher education institutions that is relevant for the Russian context. The Ward method is used to cluster universities on the basis of university distinctions in terms of the availability of resources, education, and research and development. This typology of universities is verified by assessing their efficiency score gained from modified Data Envelopment Analysis, incorporating universities' heterogeneity. Finally, the paper gives a decision tree for classifying universities bearing in mind their diversity. It might be expanded for a broader set of inputs and outputs, namely external projectbased research funding modes and cooperation between universities and industry to pursue the development of innovation. The results can be used for shaping targeted policies aimed at particular university groups.

Over the past decades due to increasing economic pressure and rising demands by government and society, the organizational landscape of higher education is changing while university activities become more diversified. The focus of public support is shifting from funding current activities of universities towards rewarding outcomes. There are, as a result, many strategies to adapt and develop universities in this changing environment. For example, emerging typologies for structuring a network of higher education institutions (HEIs) taking into account their diversity are at the forefront in many countries of agendas for greater efficiency in higher education. We advance a typology for HEIs in Russia taking into account indicators of research and teaching activities. We present an overview of best practices for HEIs, some typologies, a set of indicators and mathematical tools for constructing a typology of Russian public HEIs. This typology is based on clustering the input (resource allocation) and output (performance) indicators that characterize academic and educational achievements of HEIs. The proposed classification differentiates types of universities and contains a decision tree that allows assigning universities to one category or another. It can be used as a basis for a comprehensive analysis of diverse Russian universities and for government policies to address each of the identified HEI types, depending on their characteristics.