The purpose of this article is to examine the tension that exists between the main purposes of higher education, humanistic and utilitarian, through the competency-based approach. The main conclusions of the theoretical study, based on structural-functional and system-genetic approaches, are that this tension can be removed through introducing universal competences (the Russian alternative to key competences, soft skills), that due to their specificity, they can perform utilitarian, humanistic, integrating and balancing functions of learning. Also, upbringing and self-upbringing (intellectual, value-based and existential development, respectively) in the universalizing matrix of culture reproduction; they can transfer features of classical university education (the humanistic focus and universalism) into a specialized institute education, facilitating their convergence. However, the competence approach-based perspective of two central purposes of education, while overcoming the artificial dichotomy between them, still remains instrumental rather than autotelic.