In the Russian system of higher education and science between two large federal programs «Project 5-100» and «PRIORITY 2030» the issue of developing entrepreneurial activity of universities becomes more essential. At the same time, most of the existing studies of the factors of universities' own incomes and related characteristics were made on foreign data, and their results are not always applicable to Russian reality due to the historical and structural features of the higher education system and science. In 2019-2021, the authors of this article contributed to this gap by conducting a number of studies on the data of the Monitoring of the effectiveness of the activities of educational institutions of higher education. This article is aimed at combining the results of both these studies and other empirical studies of the factors of the economic performance of Russian universities. The main result of the article is a summary table that highlights these factors, associated indicators and the direction of influence. The article can be useful for managers in the field of higher education and researchers of university economics.