The purpose of the article is to raise the issue of the significance, advantages and disadvantages of universal competencies and the conceptual validity of their set / framework for competence-based education (including Russian higher education). The factors that actualize universal competencies in the conditions of the modern digital world and the knowledge economy are identified. The significance of this actualization for education is comprehended: expanding the boundaries of the competence-based approach; increasing the availability of competencies that have been the province of the few; transferring of the process of mastering these competencies from familiar environments (family, work) to schools and universities; avoiding the opposition of training and upbringing, education and socialization. The main problematic points of this conception are considered: the vagueness and incompleteness of their conceptualization; the complexity of their measurement and assessment; the risk of mixing personality qualities and competencies, which is fraught with an overestimation of their upbringing potential; the ambiguity of changing their status in education: from means to ends; the possibility of their inclusion in the context of indoctrination. The authors reveal the ambivalent nature of the Russian framework, reflected in its disproportionate structure: its ability to respond promptly to the challenges of a dynamic world turns into in its dependence on the economic and political agenda. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that the issue is investigated through the prism of the fundamental contradiction of competence-based education - between the focus on a predictable guaranteed successful result and the effort to take into account the unpredictability of the modern world. It is determined the conceptual validity of the Russian framework of universal competencies embodying an attempt to overcome such contradiction. As a result, it is demonstrated that the dialectically interrelated advantages and problematic aspects of the conception and framework of universal competencies give them an ambiguous but progressive significance for Russian higher education.