This article examines a crisis of agency among university students amid the transformation of the social contract. The study’s relevance stems from the growing tension between students’ paternalistic expectations and institutional dysfunction, which precipitates a crisis of agency among future university graduates in Yekaterinburg, one of Russia’s major economic and cultural centers. The study aims to determine how students’ life strategies (migration, latent adaptation, and “loyalty” to the system) are transformed under conditions of institutional uncertainty and geopolitical risk. The theoretical framework draws on R. Merton’s and T. Gurr’s approaches to relative deprivation, the exit–voice–loyalty–neglect (EVLN) framework developed from A. Hirschman’s exit–voice–loyalty model, and P. Sztompka’s theory of institutional trust. The empirical analysis draws on a 2025 survey of university students (n = 1,188). The analysis identified a strategy of “latent adaptation” (a strategy of deferred action) characteristic of a substantial proportion of undecided young people. The findings demonstrate that the gap between young people’s paternalistic expectations and institutional capacities arises from a mismatch between entrenched traditions of socialization and the contemporary market environment, rather than from institutional dysfunction alone. Under these conditions, “loyalty” to the system ceases to be a value-based orientation and instead becomes a manifestation of a crisis of instrumental rationality: when young people cannot use lawful channels for exercising influence (“voice”), they opt for “exit” or “latent adaptation.” The study’s original contribution lies in differentiating between endogenous risks (associated with the application of law and corruption) and exogenous risks that affect young professionals’ planning horizons. The article concludes that restoring trust requires reducing endogenous uncertainty in the institutional environment rather than increasing the number of formal programs.

youth, social contract, paternalistic expectations, life strategies, instrumental rationality, endogenous and exogenous uncertainty, migration attitudes

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