Отечественное образование как система и объект управления

The article proposes communicative conceptualization of the notion of “education system”. The turn of modern theoretical sociology toward the  system-communicative theory (N. Luhmann), in the author’s opinion, marked not only a waiver of structural and functional approaches to the analysis and management  of social systems, but also a refrain from the relapses of their criticism built on  the notion of “ideal norm”. The author also makes an attempt to implement the  logic of the development of operationally closed recursively evolving systems as  a tool for analyzing some actions of the regulator on reforming Russian higher  education, which were directly transferred to higher education institutions within the last 10–15 years.