The overarching theme of the 1999 symposia has been globalization and its effects on institutions. (The term "university" should be understood as shorthand for the increasingly broad spectrum of higher education institutions.) The symposia have examined this phenomenon through the prism of the five Universities Projects topics:

1. University management and finance
2. Academic structure and governance within the university
3. Meeting student needs
4. Technology in higher education
5. The role of the university in the emerging civil society

For the July 1999 symposium, twenty-four participants from eight flagship universities throughout European Russia and Western Siberia joined representatives of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, ten facilitators from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Finland and the World Bank, and observers from foundations for five-days of discussion of Russian university reform in the context of national and regional development.