Nowadays there are three basic types of higher education institutions in Russia. These are Universities, Academies and Institutes.
Universities: responsible for education and research in a variety of disciplines; There are "classical" and "technical" universities with special attention paid to social sciences and humanities or fundamental and applied (engineering) sciences.
Academies: responsible for education and research. They differ from universities only in that they restrict themselves to a single discipline;
Institutes: multi-discipline oriented. They can be independent structural units, or part of a university or academy and usually specialize in one field. However pedagogical institutes are responsible for all spectrums of disciplines taught at schools.
There area lot of Private Institutions. They offer degrees in the fields such as business, culture, sociology and religion.