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К вопросу об особенностях образовательных услуг
This article deals with the specific characteristics of educational services rendered by institutions of higher education (universities). It focuses, at first, on the characteristics which are immanent to the services in general and then examines the specific characteristics of the educational services. In doing so, the author of the article considers the phenomenon from two sides: first, as "a benefit (that is, as social-economic category, special social phenomenon) and second, as external manifestation/functioning of this benefit in the world as a result of a human activity which may be defined as one of the existing types of the services. Along with examining general characteristics of the services the author also analyzes the specific characteristics of educational services. Among them, the most important characteristics are: their determining nature, critical importance for the clients, complexity of the objective evaluation of such services, deferred receipt of real results as well as competitive approach used in the process of presenting such services to a customer.