The authors of the article defi ne trust as the basic matter of the relationship between institutional actors - higher education and its stakeholders (in our case, the business community). The basis of this principle consists of the value system of inter-institutional interaction, a set of regulators and the conditions for their implementation, a variety of eff ective interaction practices based on actors’ mutual trust. The current regulatory documents (on the federal, regional, and municipal levels) rather defi ne the general framework for the formation of a system of trust relations between higher education and stakeholders. Moreover, the presence of regulatory gaps, barriers and limitations, the regulators’ resource insecurity seriously hinders the development of long-term inter-institutional relations, and reduce the level of trust in these documents themselves. Existing regulatory restrictions hinder the development of network ties between universities and business; prevent the emergence of initiatives that could become points of growth for entrepreneurial market activity, and the implementation of eff ective social projects devoted to the development of territories. The low level of inter-institutional trust does not allow the business community and universities to focus on complex, long-term relationships between them. Fruitful relations require deep integration in order to obtain long-term socio-economic and socio-cultural results. Experts (representatives of business communities) are pessimistic about the innovative development of the economic and social spheres in the near and distant future. They believe in the negative socio-economic and sociocultural background that limits new relationships and a culture of trust between universities and stakeholders.