Article
Как государства добиваются международной конкурентоспособности университетов: уроки для России
The authors analyze excellence initiatives to boost the university sector implemented in the past fifteen years in different countries of the world. On the basis of the international experiences and evaluation of recent reforms of the tertiary education system in Russia the authors come to the conclusion that competitiveness projects of the Russian universities should have the following features: focus on the development of multi-disciplinary centers of excellence and postgraduate programs in leading universities; targeted funding to support promising young researchers; emphasis on internationalization; governance reform.
The article presents the methodology of a comprehensive research on HEIs’ role in regional development. The methodology was adapted to study the North-Eastern Federal University experience in facilitating Far Eastern Federal District economic and social development. To evaluate the university’s role in facilitating regional development three key dimensions were examined: innovation, education and research, socio-cultural sphere. These dimensions correspond to the federal universities’ functions, and meet development trends of Far Eastern Federal District. A toolkit for analysis of the North-Eastern Federal University development programme effectiveness was developed in the framework of the research. Evaluation of Far Eastern Federal District social and economic development trends and implementation of the North-Eastern Federal University development programme enabled to provide recommendations for the university future development. The research outcomes are of applied nature and can be used for elaboration of the university’s strategic development concept, and amendment of the ongoing university’s development programme. The conducted research creates foundation for the university’s effective contribution to the territory development. The research was conducted in the framework of the project “Analysis of the NEFU’s role in the development of the territory on the basis of the OECD methodology adapted for Russian universities to develop recommendations for enhancement of university’s influence on innovative, technological, educational and socio-cultural development of the region”, implemented within the contract № 1537-09/12, 24.09.2012 by the Institute of International Organisations of the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” and Department for Strategic Development of North-Eastern Federal University in 2012.
The role of the governments in the development and operation of universities in the emerging countries is being significantly transformed by the global agenda. There are a lot of evidences that governments’ aimed at the establishment of the world-class universities increase their interference in higher education systems and even in the operation of particular institutions. Governments set tasks for universities related to the accelerated increase of their global competitiveness by launching so-called excellence-initiatives in higher education. Consequently, the matter of the changing autonomy of the higher education institutions participating in excellence initiatives arises.
There are academic and expert discussions arguing that the implementation of excellence initiatives is in large degree irrelevant to national and local challenges. The question arises whether governments should specifically set national and local objectives for world-class universities, or whether the growth of global competitiveness brings benefits for national and local challenges. Through the analysis of excellence initiatives, this chapter shows that in most cases governments do not specify the objectives related to national and local contribution. This chapter presents a study that examines the implementation of the Russian excellence initiative, Project 5-100, which aims to have at least five universities participating in the project in the top 100 world rankings by 2020. This initiative ignores potential direct national and local contribution. At the same time, the experience of the Russian initiative shows that participating universities purposefully develop nationally and locally relevant activities while they move towards global competitiveness without government pressure. The chapter discusses why these objectives are interrelated.
For the Russian higher education system, the last decade has been not only a time of far-reaching major reforms (such as the introduction of a new university admissions system based on national unified test examination (USE) obligatory for all high school graduates), but also one pertaining to the realization of several government excellence initiatives aimed at supporting and developing leading Russian universities. In fact, these gov rnment programs influenced the higher education landscape of the country a great deal. For, while they did not help much with solving the problem of a preponderance of weak higher education institutions in the sector, they certainly allowed a fair number of rather good and promising universities to improve significantly the quality of their educational programs and to some extent, their research capacity. Three main programs have been launched in the last eight years: innovative educational projects, development and support for national research universities, and most recently, the program for improving global competitiveness, all of which have been underpinned by the same basic principles, which has resulted in common inefficiencies. All three programs were initiated by the state and were run under the assumption that there would be little, if any, input from the business sector, both in terms of financial resources or direct participation through links between the academic sector and industry.
Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We propose a theoretical model that predicts that more talented individuals are particularly sensitive in their career choices to the quality of institutions, and test these predictions on a sample of around 95 countries of the world. We find a strong positive association between the quality of institutions and graduation of college and university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. Our findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models, including smaller samples of former colonies and transition countries. The quality of human capital makes the distinction between educational choices under strong and weak institutions particularly sharp. We show that the allocation of talent is an important link between institutions and growth.