The article discusses the prerequisites for Russia’s transition to post-industrial society which is characterized by a completely different employment structure than the one that has developed to date. The urgency of the problem is associated with the risks of large-scale technological unemployment at the stage of restructuring of the national economy. The way to mitigate possible social problems is the timely modernization of the higher education system including its sectoral priorities in personnel training and the regions where universities are located. To identify the discrepancy between the personnel training system and the real economy of the regions, a system of regional diagnostics based on two constructed econometric dependencies is proposed. The first one sets the relationship between the number of students and gross regional product and thereby determines the boundary of economic efficiency: the regions lying above it have an excess potential of the higher education system. The second dependence sets the relationship between the number of unemployed and the number of students and thereby determines the boundary of social efficiency: the regions lying above it ineffectively integrate university graduates into the needs of the local labor market. Applied calculations made it possible to identify two groups of problem regions with different directions of problems. Subsequent regional and sectoral diagnostics showed that even within such a traditional driver industry as the agricultural sector, there are local personnel imbalances in the supply and demand of personnel from various subjects of the Federation. Approximately the same situation is typical for healthcare, while for one of the post – industrial sectors-tourism-there is a fundamental discrepancy between the priorities of the regulator of the higher education system and the needs of the regions. The obtained results allowed formulating proposals for the system of regional universities