Essence of university and prospects of its development by a higher education institution in mining

The article presents the essence of university as the organized aspiration for reality and its transformation towards development of mankind. It is shown that the essence of University is structured as a unity of three components: spirit, intelligence and energy. The notion of University is defined as a space of high concentration of various advanced intelligence pregnant with spirit and energy of knowledge and transformation of the latter into the large-scale social phenomena. The levels of the University essences are distinguished as: true, similar and remote. The structural-functional model and the four levels of the academic knowledge mechanisms reflective of the unique nature of academic knowledge and its long-term use by human beings are presented.
The author describes 66 year-long history of one of the leading mining universities in Russia-Kuzbass State Technical University, and its present-day stagnation. It is revealed that the state of the structural components of the University essence (spirit, intelligence and energy) prevent the university from the efficient materialization of its essence even at a scale of a region. The system elements of KuzSTU are characterized from the standpoint of essence - fact, which discloses considerable discrepancies between the essences and facts at all organizational levels of the university.
The academic knowledge mechanism at KuzSTU contains essential defects in the form of the absence of the pioneer and absorption levels of cognition, which eliminates capability of reaching the own breakthrough scientific results and successfully transforming than into large-scale social phenomena. This inevitably entails impoverishment in the quality of the second and third levels of cognition. KuzSTU is yet an educational institute. The prospects for becoming a University depend on a new leader with an efficient managerial team and on the success in their performance aimed, first of all, at consistency between the essences and factual elements of elements at all organizational levels, as well as at making the fourth-level mechanism of academic knowledge in all areas of research.