EXPORT OF HIGHER EDUCATION AS THE TOOL FOR COMPETITIVENESS IMPROVEMENT OF ECONOMIES IN THE WORLD

Abstract

The research paper covers the impact of higher education export on the competitiveness level of key world economies in terms of international division of labor and global value chains, including USA, Germany and China. At the same time, the comparison in the field of higher education export in Russia has been implemented. There have been revealed main factors in the attraction of foreign students in universities of analyzed countries: the economic factor (the profit from higher educational services for foreign citizens), the consumer factor (the profit from living costs of foreign citizens during the educational period), factor of additional labor force (the employment of foreign graduates in the international companies), factor of “soft power” (the loyal attitude to the country, where higher education has been received) and factor of innovation development (the participation of foreign citizens in the development and implementation of research ideas in startups). Additionally, indicators of selected countries were compared in terms of its competitiveness level, including the complexity of economies and its innovation development. The result of this research is identification of interaction between export of higher education and competitiveness level of a country: USA, Germany and China have high indicators in this field in comparison with Russia. Based on the results main directions of higher education export development have been described with a target of competitiveness level increase in the national economy globally.