In today’s globalizing world tolerance becomes a basic value in the development of a personality and modeling of his / her consciousness. This article is devoted to the study of an ethnic tolerance level of students on the example of Altai State University (ASU). The key priority of the development strategy of ASU is its integration into the educational environment of Asian nations. Many contacts with foreign and regional universities have been rapidly growing in recent years, international exchange programs being an integral part of them. The authors show a high level of ethnic tolerance in an academic environment as the result of their research, which is based on the public opinion poll of students at ASU and uses a technique for measuring the index of tolerance. The results also indicate a certain degree of readiness of young people for cultural and interethnic communication in the educational space. More than that, the research pays special attention to the factors that contribute to the formation of ethnic tolerance. However, the authors reveal a contradiction in the value systems of a certain part of student population, i.e. some respondents found many questions devoted to their attitudes to other national and ethnic groups difficult to answer or prefered to choose a “neutral” answer. Such reaction poses an implicit threat, because these responses indicate low significance of tolerance in the value set of the respondents. As the student population attitudes are characterized by ambivalence, it is necessary to aim ethnic and cultural policy at increasing the level of ethnic tolerance in the university environment.