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Abstract: The article is devoted to the issues of developing students’ autonomy in the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL). The aim of the present paper is to outline the ways and means to develop IHL students’ autonomy in view of contemporary educational policy in Russia and transformational changes taking place in the IHLs. The contemporary educational paradigm stipulates the training of highly-skilled graduates capable of and motivated for life-long learning. For the goal to be fulfilled, the graduates must be able to work with information, sort it out on their own, acquire knowledge and apply critical thinking to the learning process, i.e. to become an autonomous personality ready to take responsibility for one’s learning in the fast-changing world. Foreign and Russian scientists have a lot of common ideas in the understanding and definition of autonomy, with the different idea of the role played by professor and the IHL in development of students’ autonomy. Western scientists consider that the autonomy is full when students are completely responsible for their learning whereas their Russian counterparts believe that due to the historic and cultural reasons students in Russia cannot be fully autonomous at the present time. The role of professor in developing students’ autonomy is very significant.It is important to be ready and motivated, focused on achieving the goal, to be aware and make use of modern computer technologies and develop competence in the field. We can suggest the following means and ways to develop students’ autonomy: to form students’ appropriate motivation and self-esteem; habits and psychological attributes which will improve the process of autonomy developing; to help students develop their intellectual qualities that are the basis of the learning process (ability to compare, generalize, etc.). The above mentioned techniques can be used in all Institutes of Higher Learning.