Article
Незавершенный переход от госплана к мастер-плану
The article provides a historical background of the establishment and development of the Soviet and post-Soviet higher education system. A typology is offered of higher education institutions of the Soviet period (regional infrastructure-based and sectoral higher education institutions and classical universities), and their destiny in the 1990s and 2000s is commented upon. The way out of the present-day crisis, in the authors’ opinion, is indicated by the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which ensured in the last century complete reorganization of that state’s education system.
The article is devoted to a new type of educational programs that are formed at the intersection of higher and secondary education. Education as an institute is seen as an instrument of social stratification of society. The authors analyze the major developments of education as an institute, for instance differentiation between of academic and vocational educational programs and the creation of programs of production a “Homo habilis” — a skilled performer. Changes in the vocational education system are considered in the light of the introduction of the new educational standards FSES 2011 (Federal State Educational Standards).
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.