AbstractBackground: In the paper the formation of world-class research universities is analysed. The paper studies the history of the research university, prerequisites of its appearance, formation and its development toward modern research university. The modern research university is being cautiously viewed nowadays. The crisis of the university is its reality. The question of the corporate culture formation is now considered to be a topical matter in connection with globalization process,Methods: The authors implemented comparative analysis by comparing Humboldt's model of the research university and the modern one.Results: The comparison is made in regard to the idea of university, its criteria and mission. Special emphasis is laid on the analysis and comparison of corporate culture systems.Conclusions: Corporate culture is a novel criterion of the classical university that has recently arisen in the information society and now characterizes the university in a complementary way: on the one hand, as a competitive market entity, and on the other hand, as a guardian of its traditional, historically formed humanitarian criteria, ideas and mission. The following conclusion has been reached: the updated parameters have the identical form to those found by W. von Humboldt, only essence has changed.