One of the world's leading social trends in development of higher education of the twenty-first century is progression of relationships between universities and business. The main purpose of this paper is to compare the models of integration between universities and business, considering the triple model of social partnership, the model with the dominant role of the state, and the model of mixed representation, typical for the Central European countries. The methodological framework of this research includes methods of statistical and comparative analysis and synthesis. From the results of this research, European higher education has developed and effectively operates the developed models of interaction between institutions of higher education and business. The obtained results allow us to evaluate the possibilities of applying positive foreign experience in Russian reality.