Abstract:

Introduction:
Rapid and cardinal reforms of Russian higher education nowadays lead to the educational risk increase and reduce the effectiveness of education for the students – the main consumers of education services. The article touches upon an urgent problem of reducing the subjective risks by maintaining a culture of trust in the university and different social communities in the field of higher education.

Methodology and methods:
The research methodology is based on the classic fundamental theories of trust, formed by N. Luman, F. Fukuyama, A. Seligman, P. Sztompka. Their basic ideas helped us to enrich the analysis of a trust culture, main risks that appear in the field of trust, and the risk behavior of social communities in the field of higher education. The trust concept plays an important role in our study, while it is viewed through the “risk society” theory, which leads a long history both in foreign (U. Beck, N. Luman, E. Giddens, J. Habermas, etc.) and in Russian practice (I. Bestuzhev-Lada, Zh. Toschenko, O. Yanitsky).
The article is based on the results of a sociological research conducted in the Ural Federal District of the Russian Federation in 2017–2018. We arranged a mass survey (the sample size: 1860 students) and an expert survey (30 interviews with experts), who represent the pedagogical community, university administrators, and the business community associated with the educational and management process at the university.

Results:
The survey reveals 4 groups of risks for students: risks of choosing the profession and university and risks associated with educational process and its results. We analyzed how social community of students exists in current conditions of risk and uncertainty, how well they are prepared for the social change and are willing to fit in the new educational model. We have found, that risks of taking the responsibility for the choice of professional education and university are not directly related to the institutional trust and students’ trust in educational management and its educational policy (at university, regional, federal levels).
The way how students trust the institutional structures and all the processes inside the higher education institutions determine the high or low risks of the results of their educational activity and its entity. The low level of institutional trust leads to educational risk increase. Institutional trust influences the students’ strategies of risk behavior, sets the degree of their activity, their readiness to overcome educational risks, and their adaptation to the social uncertainty.

Conclusions:
An analysis of students' trust behavior shows, that nowadays it is formed in spontaneous way. It grows up from a confrontation between students’ community trust in teachers and the institutional mistrust in the management structures of higher education. In fact, teachers in everyday communication with students compensate their mistrust and smooth the confrontation between students and formal management structures. There is a need to develop a scientific approach towards the educational risk management to create a comprehensive solution, which can maintain the culture of trust in the university.

Keywords:

Risk, educational risks, higher education, trust culture, risk management.