Реформа высшего образования: новые реалии в условиях цифровизации

The Unified Digital Platform of Science and Higher Education was developed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia. It is aimed at implementing measures of the state policy involving the scientific and technical development of the Russian Federation. The purpose of the article is to analyze the development of the digital platform applied in educational activities, taking into account the digitalization of universities and the level of demand for specialists in the labor market. A favorable result may be an access of organizations to certified specialists, direct participation in innovative and scientific projects developed by universities, implementation of professional competencies into the curriculum, taking into account the specifics of enterprises, bodies and organizations, the employer's ability to select applicants based on the information about future specialists. The goal can be achieved by activating the digital platform of the university and implementing it by organizations, institutions, bodies that have concluded long-term labor contracts or are ready to conclude them in the future. The methodological basis of the article is results of the studies conducted by the Institute of Economics, Management and Law of Irkutsk National Research University. The novelty of the study is due to the theoretical justification and development of approaches to the transformation of digital platforms according to the Concept developed and approved by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation. The authors assessed the effectiveness of its implementation and identified current targets.

The article discusses the current directions of digital transformation of scientific and educational activities. In 2021, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education developed a Strategy for the Digital Transformation of Science and Higher Education, which is aimed at achieving digital maturity as the basis for strategic development and digital transformation of scientific organizations and educational institutions of higher education. Five main directions of digital transformation of science and higher education are presented: architecture of digital transformation; development of digital services; data management; infrastructure modernization; human resources management. Additionally, seven more subprojects have been identified: datahab; data management system for science and higher education; digital transformation architecture; digital university; unified science service platform; software and hardware marketplace; digital education; service hub. The Strategy of Digital Transformation of the branch of science and higher education reflects the focus on digital interaction of information systems, their interconnectedness, subordination and unity of work in relation to scientific and educational organizations of higher education. One of the vectors of digital transformation at present is a certain shift in its focus, which consists not only in digitalization of various processes and types of professional activity, but also in changing and transforming digital interaction systems. The key aspects of the digital transformation of science and education are new, in their content, directions and models of activity, which are based on the synthesis of constantly updated digital solutions and services, opportunities for continuing professional education and development for specialists, the availability of conditions for organizing digital changes, support and coordination of effective communication between participants in digital transformation projects within the framework of professional interaction.

The transformations that have taken place in education have led to the emergence of a new educational framework under which modern higher education institutions are actively adapting. The activity of educational organizations was rethought and teachers’ work acquired new features. Today institutions of higher education must build educational activities in such a way as to be able to satisfy changing needs of the state and society. Therefore, in higher education educational activities should be built at a high level. Thus, to achieve it, it is significant to ensure decent management of it. The purpose of the article is to reveal general features of management activities in a higher educational institution and, on their basis, to develop a model for managing them. The model of management of educational activities in higher education proposed by the authors is focused on new approaches to quality as the main component of quality management being a system object. The work achieved the goal of uncovering the general features of managerial activity in a higher educational institution and, based on them, developed a model for managing educational activities. The model of educational activity management in higher education that we have developed is focused on new approaches to quality as the main component of education management, it is a system object. The model, as the study showed, helps to improve the process of managing educational activities, to bring it to a new level. According to the study, the authors concluded that the model showed its effectiveness and contributed to educational management improvement.

Importance. Today volunteering is not just a tendency, but rather a trend in the development of modern society. It’s becoming a life standard for active young people. The society itself begins to act as a social change source. In our country a solid foundation of volunteering is being laid at all levels of education, spreading its influence on other society spheres. Association Dobro.RF together with its partners has been implementing the “Volunteering over a lifetime” concept for many years. A large team is working on it, including the state represented by Rospatriotcenter, Federal Agency for Youth Affairs of Russia “Rosmolodezh”, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Economic Development, Agency for Strategic Initiatives, other agencies and major public organizations of the country, and Russian citizens themselves. The implementation of legislative acts and strategic documents aimed at the educational activities development in educational organizations of higher education (hereinafter – EOHE), as well as the growing demand for the program “Service Learning” makes the search for effective tools and practices highly relevant. They are focused on the education and development of students’ soft-skills, which are adaptive and relevant to the educational programs content. In this study we analyze the experts’ experience and opinion in the higher education field. Volunteering is considered as a tool for seamless educational activities integration into educational and extracurricular activities of students undergoing different academic programs in order to develop both hard and soft skills. The volunteering effectiveness in this area is confirmed by the high level of support for this type of activity, stated in the National Project “Education”, the National Project “Youth and Children” and a number of specialized strategic documents and resolutions. The aim of the study is to identify the key trends in the students’ soft-skills development in the integrating volunteering practices process into curricular and extracurricular activities, considering volunteer work as a convergent tool in the professional education system, based on expert interviews.Materials and Methods. Using the expert interview method, volunteerism has been studied as a tool of practice-oriented education, which has a high educational value and is aimed at developing professional and supra-professional competencies.Results and Discussion. The results of an expert interview with the professional community representatives in the education field in Russian Federation are presented, which reflect the respondents’ positive attitude towards volunteerism as a promising tool for developing students’ supraprofessional and professional competencies, acting as an the youth effective element and educational policy of higher education educational institutions.Conclusion. The importance of universities in the formation and promotion of the volunteerism culture and values is confirmed, and the possibilities of including volunteerism in the educational process as an effective convergent tool in the students’ supra-professional and professional competencies development are substantiated.

The article deals with changes in the structure of higher education due to the division of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (MES RK) into two departments: the Ministry of Education (ME) and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MSHE). The latter has been given the functions and powers in the field of higher and postgraduate education, science, and language policy.

In the article, the author analyses the system of general secondary education in the Republic of Bulgaria from the perspective of administrative law and also examines the regulatory framework for education in this country with a view to identifying the specific features of school education which determine its efficiency and quality. The fundamental rights of Bulgarian citizens to education are enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria. Education in Bulgaria is a national priority, and therefore educational policy is formed and implemented on the following principles: a unified state educational policy to ensure the right to preschool and school education; focus on the interest and motivation of the child and pupil, on age and social changes in life, as well as on the ability to apply the acquired competences in practice. Having analysed the fundamental law of the Republic of Bulgaria “On Preschool and School Education”, the author notes that it is supplemented by a significant number of legal acts issued in the form of resolutions of the Council of Ministers, orders of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria and a number of other ministries on specialised education programmes. The author pays particular attention to the distribution of administrative powers in the field of education between the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria, regional education departments, local self-government bodies and educational institutions. In the author’s opinion, the activities of bodies for consideration and addressing of a wide range of issues at the school level are worthy of further study: these are pedagogical councils, public councils established at each school, and boards of trustees established to attract additional financial and material resources to support school activities and control their intended use. Based on the study, the author concludes that public administration of the general secondary education in Bulgaria is characterised by deep democratization and decentralization, as well as expansion of the autonomy given to schools. While the main subject of public administration in the field of general secondary education in Bulgaria is the Ministry of Science and Education, a significant role is also played by regional education departments and local governments, where the former provide methodological support to educational institutions, and the latter supervise and control directly the educational institutions.

The subject of the study is education in the field of culture and art, its purpose is to assess public policy in the field of art education. The article analyzes the reasons for the appearance in the film industry of specialists with a low level of training. The study was based on the regulatory legal acts of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, data from Federal State Statistics Service, portals of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia: ‘Monitoring the employment of graduates’ and ‘How to enter the UNIVERSITY correctly’. During the study, a hypothesis was formulated on the trend of an increase in the training of specialists in creative specialties in non-core educational organizations. The hypothesis was tested on the basis of a regressive analysis of the distribution of admission quotas to higher education organizations, regardless of their departmental affiliation, and the construction of a linear regression. The article applies methods based on the establishment of an internal relationship of phenomena, their mathematical description. According to the analysis, the assessment of the quality of education in the field of culture and art should be determined not only by conducting online exams and testing graduates, and by questioning employers about the quality of their professional training. The author suggests measures aimed at changing the existing methodology for distributing admission quotas for creative specialties to educational organizations of higher education of the Ministry of Culture of Russia and other universities for which creative specialties are not specialized, and tightening requirements for material, technical and personnel support of a full-fledged educational process.

The specific feature and at the same time the problem of formation of a holistic system of quality assurance of higher education in Ukraine is that the impe- tus for its formation was the adoption of the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education” in 2014, in which all existing instruments of quality assurance of higher education were grouped for the first time within one integrated system, consisting of two subsystems – external and internal, each of which has its own list of mechanisms, tools, ways to ensure the quality of higher education, etc. Thus, the system and mechanisms for ensuring the quali- ty of higher education began to be formed and applied in practice without their prior scientific understanding and justification. Therefore, today the practice of their application is quite ambiguous and often contradictory, which does not contribute to neither a calm movement towards the gradual improvement of the quality of higher educa- tion, nor the effective spending of public funds during the development of this system. Therefore, each of these subsystems, including their components, requires its own research, understanding and justification in order to optimize all procedures, their coordination and balancing with each other, to avoid duplication and unnecessary “paperwork”. Thus, in particular, the external quality assurance system of higher education includes such a tool as licens- ing of educational activities in the field of higher education, which has undergone conceptual changes three times since 2014, which hinders both the solution of many problems by means of using this tool of quality assurance of higher education and effective operation of this tool in the market of educational services. The purpose of this article is to try to scientifically understand the mechanism of licensing of educational activi- ties in the field of higher education as one of the external tools to ensure the quality of higher education, including its components, and to make sound proposals for its further improvement. Research methods. The author used such methods of scientific cognition as general philosophical (universal), historical and logical methods, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, abstraction, generalization, analogy and others. The main results of the study. 1. Licensing of educational activities in the field of higher education is one of the most important tools of the system of external quality assurance of higher education and a mechanism for im- plementing state policy aimed at ensuring the ability of legal entities to provide educational services in higher education. The state is directly responsible to applicants, employers and society for the development of effective regulatory policy in terms of licensing, for the development and continuous improvement of licensing conditions, for the proper organization and continuous operation of the licensing mechanism (objective and fair compliance with licensors, licensing, licenses, impartial and systematic verification of compliance with licensing conditions by each of the participants in the market of educational ser- vices, uncompromising revocation of licenses provided that the fact of non-compliance of free economic conditions with the license conditions). 2. Stability of public relations is one of the important principles of public peace and the formation of trust in the state. Therefore, the state, which is responsible to educa- tion seekers and society for the proper functioning of the market of educational services in higher education and guarantees the ability of its licensed establishments of higher education to carry out relevant activities at the appropriate level, has no moral right to conceptually change the licensing mechanism three times. It is ineffi- cient, impractical and irresponsible. Thus, in particular, only at the level of laws of Ukraine (not to mention the level of Government resolutions and orders of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine), the following con- ceptual changes took place: 1) term licenses issued for a period of 10 years were recognized by the legislator as indefinite without any transitional, balanced and compensatory mechanisms, which cannot be called a balanced state policy, taking into account previous experience in issuing licenses; 2) the licensing mechanism, which was issued specifi- cally for the field of higher education, was replaced by another - common to all types of economic activities (and these different mechanisms were in conflict for some time and “worked” at the same time); 3) the term of the applicant’s compliance with the li- cense conditions before the license was issued was signif- icantly reduced (from two months to 10 days) and the on- site inspections (directly to the establishment of education) were replaced by only a “paper” inspection. In addition, the inspection by “experts” was replaced by an inspection by “civil servants”. All this, taking into account the level of dishonesty in society, did not strengthen the responsibil- ity of the state to society for admission to the market of educational services in higher education (especially new ones), which really meet all licensing conditions and are able to provide services in higher education; 4) licensing “by specialty” (for example, “choreogra- phy” or “law”) has been replaced by licensing “at the level” (for example, a bachelor’s or master’s degree). Such a “simplification” of the licensing procedure for establishments of higher education actually eliminates any responsibility of the state to society for the ability of establishments of higher education to carry out educational activities in the relevant specialties, the list of which is approved by the Government. Scientific novelty of the research results. 1. The mechanism of licensing of educational activities in the field of higher education is considered through the prism (at an angle) of state responsibility for the quality of higher education to society, students and employers and as one of the most effective tools for public policy in higher education. Erroneousness and ineffectiveness of public policy was demonstrated, if it is not based on previous research. Conclusions and the author’s specific suggestions. 1. The quality assurance system of higher education should be the subject of in-depth and serious research, and any legislative changes should be based on the sound results of such research. Science must anticipate legislative change, and managers must base their policy decisions on scientifically sound data. 2. Improvement of the licensing mechanism should be carried out in the direction of delimitation of functions of formation of the state policy and its realization. That is, those who create the “rules of the game” do not have to follow them later, because in this case there is a real conflict of interest. The state, represented by the Ministry of Education and Science, cannot be both a regulator of the market of educational services, the founder of the vast majority of participants in this market (state establish- ments of higher education and research institutions) and a “guarantor of the ability” of all, including state-approved licensing terms. This approach cannot be considered balanced with regard to the responsibility of the state and universities for the quality of higher education. Under such conditions, everyone loses – education seekers, employers, society and the state itself. 3. Licensing should be subject to the specialty for which the establishment of education plans to provide educational services, not the level of education. The license for educational activities should be indefinite, but again – for the specialty, not for the level of education. 4. The quality of higher education cannot be ensured without the fulfillment by establishments of higher educa- tion of the minimum requirements – licensing conditions established by the state and which are the start and foundation of quality assurance. The compliance of an establishment of education with the licensing conditions must be controlled by the consumers of educational ser- vices and the state, and any non-compliance must quickly and inevitably lead to the deprivation of such an estab- lishment of the relevant license in the relevant specialty. Compliance with licensing conditions is the foundation for the formation of an internal system to ensure the quality of educational activities and the quality of higher education and should guarantee education a safe environment (namely in terms of sanitation, fire and environmental safety, no psychological danger, including bullying, etc.) from qualified teaching staff with appropriate educational and professional qualifications, availability of informa- tional support (powerful library fund, including digital, free internet access, advisory support for teachers, etc.), availability and security of infrastructure facilities that can provide, stimulate and maintain a healthy lifestyle in the younger generations. That is, the licensing conditions should include those requirements of the state that make the stay in the establishment of education safe, comfortable and one that promotes and stimulates the acquisition of quality higher education of a certain level and specialty. These requirements also need to be reviewed from time to time, as both universities and society evolve, and what is now considered to be the standard may not be the norm in a few years and requires a proper response from the state and establishments of higher education. At the same time, the improvement of licensing conditions should not lead to the need for establishments of higher education to obtain new perpetual licenses, but each establishment must constantly ensure its compliance with the licensing conditions (taking into account all changes).

The scientific article is devoted to determining the legal principles of state supervision in the sphere of higher education. The norms of legislative and by-laws regulating state supervision and educational activities are studied. The works of scientists who studied the features of state supervision in various economic spheres are analyzed. During the preparation of the article, both general scientific and specialized legal research methods were employed. The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of legal regulation governing state supervision in the field of higher education. It is proposed to define state supervision in the sphere of higher education as the activity of authorized bodies to identify and prevent violations of the requirements of legislation on higher education, which is carried out within the limits of their powers and in the procedure specified by Ukrainian legislation. The features of legal regulation of state supervision in the sphere of higher education are established: the powers to exercise state supervision in higher education institutions are granted to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the State Education Quality Service of Ukraine; supervision over compliance with licensing conditions for educational activities is carried out exclusively by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine; special criteria have been established by which the degree of risk from conducting economic activities in the sphere of higher education is assessed; special requirements have been determined for the content of a unified act drawn up as a result of a planned measure of state supervision in the sphere of higher education. It is emphasized that the grounds for unscheduled inspections of the State Supervision Service of Ukraine are established not by the legislation on state supervision, but by the legislation on education. It is proposed to make certain amendments to the current legislation to improve the legal regulation of state supervision in the sphere of higher education: to delimit the subject of state supervision of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the State Supervision Service of Ukraine in higher education institutions; to develop and approve a special procedure for conducting unscheduled inspections of higher education institutions of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine; to determine whether the educational ombudsman has the right to run scheduled or unscheduled inspections of higher education institutions by the legislation on state supervision in the sphere of economic activities.

Evaluation of the efficiency of Russian universities: Do we need to change the paradigm?

В статье проводится анализ состояния и перспектив финансового обеспечения научно-исследовательской деятельности вузов, подведомственных Минобрнауки России в рамках сотрудничества с Международным центром научной и технической информации. Исследуется финансовый вклад каждой страны-члена МЦНТИ в научно-исследовательскую деятельность вузовМинобрнауки России за период 2013 – 2017 годов. Определены основные устойчивые направления и тренды финансового обеспечения вузов Минобрнауки России в области научно-технического сотрудничества со странами-членами МЦНТИ. Установлено ранжирование и определены группы стран участников МЦНТИ, оказывающих наибольшее влияние на финансовое обеспечение научно-исследовательской деятельности вузов Минобрнауки России. Разработаны предложения по перспективам финансового обеспечения научно-исследовательской деятельности вузов подведомственных Минобрнауки России

The federal project of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia «Advanced Engineering Schools», launched in 2022, aims to provide sectors of the economy with qualified personnel to achieve technological independence for the country. Strengthening fundamental training in higher education depends directly on the level of applicants' knowledge formed at school. There is a decline in students' interest in engineering and an analysis of school programs in mathematics, mechanics within the framework of physics, and technology revealed inconsistencies in the study of these subjects, which breaks the logical and content lines between theoretical knowledge and practice. The aim is to stimulate schoolchildren's interest in engineering and technical activity, which will subsequently contribute to the increase of their learning activity in higher education. It is proposed to introduce interdisciplinary project activities for students in grades 7-11 aimed at forming holistic ideas about the world of technology and general engineering culture, mastering scientific knowledge and practical ways of action, developing key mathematical and natural science concepts reflecting the unity of the world and related to fundamental educational objects (concepts, symbols, models). ). A well-designed process of working on engineering projects will contribute to the formation of such skills as building logical and content lines between the sections of mathematics, physics (mechanics) and technology. For first-year university students, it will be a deep understanding of the logic of creating mathematical and physical models of natural processes and technical phenomena.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is the lead United Nations (UN) agency in the field of education. As its website proudly proclaims, UNESCO is: “the only UN body with a mandate in higher education.”1 However, UNESCO’s work in higher education has always operated at the margins of its education program (Daniels 2003, 22). Higher education has long been overshadowed by the organization’s focus on popular access to basic education, especially over the past decade, when UNESCO has made achieving “education for all” the central pillar of its educational activities (Mundy 1999). Nonetheless, a strong argument can be made about the need for a UN presence in higher education, particularly in the context of the globalization and internationalization of higher education. Massification of higher education, the growth of private and trans-border service provision, and new information and communications technologies are each transforming the global organization of higher education. In higher education, these processes of globalization have created new types of within-country inequality, and new regional and interstate forms of competition (Robertson and Keeling 2008; Marginson 2008). UNESCO’s mandate within the UN requires it to defend and promote the idea of equality of opportunity within an increasingly globalized higher education policy arena. Its own constitution also requires UNESCO to promote the sharing of knowledge and to defend cultural diversity. This chapter explores the effort within UNESCO to translate its mandate as the UN body in the field of higher education into an effective program of action. Based primarily on document review, this chapter also draws on private communication with 10 higher education experts either involved in UNESCO initiatives or on staff. The chapter is structured as follows: a historical review of UNESCO activities, suggesting how these activities have been shaped by the changes in the organization and in the wider UN environment; UNESCO activities in higher education over the past decade, assessing inparticular UNESCO’s response to the rapid globalization of higher education and its efforts to define a unique role for itself in the international higher education policy agenda; exploring the challenges posed to UNESCO’s work in higher education by current UN and UNESCO; and concluding with some preliminary thoughts on the key opportunities for UNESCO in the governance of higher education as a policy arena.

The article examines the issues of organizational, methodological and personnel support, formation and coordination of the work of mobile medical teams and field hospitals of the Federal Center for Disaster Medicine in the context of the activities of organizations subordinate to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation. The authors analyzed the activities of these organizations as part of the medical forces of the All-Russian Disaster Medical Service in the period from 2021 to 2023. The issues of interaction between the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and the day-to-day management body of the All-Russian Disaster Medical Service are analyzed. The model of involvement of medical forces of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia in the Disaster Medicine Service at the federal level is proposed.

The article compares measures to support female teachers in universities in the UK, Germany and Russia with gender statistics from the OECD. An ambiguous correlation was revealed: the broader the measures to support female university teachers, the lower their share in higher education. The purpose of the work is to identify the reasons for this relationship. Within the framework of the hypothesis, the following thesis was put forward: high competition in higher education affects the decrease in the proportion of female teachers and forces the states to introduce a wide range of support tools to achieve gender balance. Comparison of the specifics of the spheres of higher education in the studied countries: R&D expenditures in the field of higher education and the working conditions of teachers (average salary, mobility, a specificity of contracts, hours worked, career opportunities) made it possible to identify the level of competition in universities. The obtained results confirmed the hypothesis about the direct influence of the level of competition on the share of female teachers in higher education. In conclusion, the relevance of the experience of European countries in building a gender balance among university teachers for Russia is considered. It is concluded that significant differences in the specifics of the sphere of higher education in Russia and the studied European countries, as well as the dominant share of female university teachers in our country, are not a sufficient reason for refusing to study foreign experience. On the contrary, the measures taken by the Government and the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia in recent years, if successfully implemented, will significantly increase the level of competition in the field of domestic higher education and the issue of gender balance will become relevant. In order to prevent a possible generational gap among female university teachers and the aggravation of the problem of gender balance in the future, it is necessary to study and adapt foreign experience, avoiding mistakes.