The article is devoted to clarifying the role and place of higher education in innovative systems in the context of the knowledge economy formation. The relationship between the categories “innovative economy", “information socie-ty” and “knowledge economy” is shown. The content of the “innovation system” category is dis-closed and its compo-nents are highlighted. The additional importance of innovation systems in the context of deglobalization and increased geo-economic turbulence is emphasized. The generalized structure of the innovation process is given and three enlarged components of the innovation system (science, education and business) are identified. The role of universities is stated as an integrating component of the innovation system, within which knowledge is generated, accumulated, used and dis-seminated, as well as obtaining a synergistic effect from the interaction of all subjects of innovation activity. The econom-ic importance of the higher education system is emphasized, at the individual level expressed in the growth of household incomes due to the increase in the level of wages, and at the national level –in the increase in the rate of return on capi-tal investments. Three key public functions of higher education have been identified – the increment in human capital, the increase in the adaptability of the economy to innovations and the activation of knowledge diffusion processes. The importance of human capital in the formation of the innovative society susceptibility is emphasized, as well as the need to match the structure and functions of modern universities to solving the problems of ensuring the processes of network knowledge production, the formation of sufficient quantitative and corresponding to the tasks of intensive economic de-velopment qualitative parameters of human capital at the national and regional levels and the formation of multilateral innovation networks. The necessity is substantiated and the tasks of changing the role and modernizing the function of the higher education system in connection with activating the processes of the society digital transformation in the condi-tions of the fourth industrial revolution are clarified.