University perceptions and practices in dealing with students’ academic diversity: tendency toward isomorphism or diversification?

Today growing and diversifying student body characterizes higher education. At the same time, universities worldwide face increased pressure to provide student-oriented education and maximise students’ learning outcomes and success. From this point, it becomes important to learn how universities answer to such pressure and what kind of practices they accomplish. Using isomorphism\diversification dichotomy this work aims to map perceptions and practices of Russian universities in working with students with different academic preparedness. Using online survey, semi-structured interviews and university documentation as methods of this research, I concluded that university practices in many ways are mostly isomorphic rather than diversified. Most universities pay attention to work with strong, or talented, students, while underprepared students are less out of concern. These findings raise further questions about equality of educational opportunities of different groups of students and challenges existing educational policies mostly supporting talented students.