Экономика образования: актуальные проблемы

Abstract

Research findings on the actual problems in the economics of education in
 Russia are presented. It is shown that education cannot be treated as a public
 benefit. Due to positive externalities education is socially significant. It is
 incorrect to treat such the category as "education" as one of public benefits. New
 forms of the Russian education establishments – such as autonomous and
 "new" budgetary establishments – demonstrate economic behavior, closely
 similar to models of managerial and neoclassical theories of firm. The marginal
 analysis based on calculation of direct variable costs allows to define the breakeven
 level for a tuition fee, and for the budgetary subsidy for training. Their size
 is defined by the amount of teaching employees compensations. Educational
 establishments’ overall costs significantly exceed the marginal costs providing
 for break-even point. The majority of Russia’s universities can successfully
 implement differentiation strategy through offering new educational programs,
 which require the correspondent marginal costs to be set on a break-even level.
 The function of economic management is argued to be a new objective for
 educational establishments. The authors prove that these objectives can be met
 based on the use of approaches and methods applied by commercial
 organizations. The teachers workload, conditioned based on setting the norm
 for the number of learners per teacher, depends significantly on the overall
 number of students. Heavy teachers’ workload is conditioned by the insufficient
 number of students. Macroeconomic efficiency of human capital, accrued in the
 education system, has been decreasing rapidly since 2011, which can be due to
 economic inefficiency of educational establishments.