SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND INSTITUTIONAL PRECONDITIONS FOR THE FORMATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES MARKET IN HIGHER EDUCATION OF UKRAINE

Abstract

When considering the problems of the educational services market formation and functioning in higher education, most authors attribute the emergence of this market to fundamental political and economic changes in Ukraine in the early 1990s and its transition to a market economy. This approach is limited as the market for educational services has existed before. In the process of market expansion into public spheres in Ukraine in the last decade of the 20th century, it got a generally completed form, although its formation has not yet ended and continues to transform. Over the past hundred and fifty years, the socio-economic system in Ukraine has changed three times: the second half of the 19th century – the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the beginning of the 20th century – the transition from capitalism to socialism, the beginning of the 21st century – the reverse transition from socialism to capitalism. The educational services market is one of the components of a market system of the country as a whole. The nature of socio-economic relations, of course, influenced the formation and functioning of the educational services market in higher education, which was under various factors affecting it in different socio-economic and institutional conditions. Therefore, this study considers three main historical stages of the formation of this market, each corresponding to a certain socio-economic system: - development of the educational services market in higher education of Ukraine in the late 19th-early 20th centuries at the stage of formation and rise of capitalism; - functioning of the deformed educational services market in higher education of the Ukrainian SSR after the victory of the socialist revolution and in the Soviet Union era; - widescale introduction of market relations in higher education of modern Ukraine during the period of democratic transformations, changes in the socio-economic and political system, the abandonment of socialism and the return to the capitalist system. This approach, unlike most of those presented in modern Ukrainian economic literature, covers the entire historical period, in which there was a market for educational services in Ukraine’s higher education. To ascertain the peculiarities and the characteristics of the market, at each stage the presence and development of its main elements should be determined. Those elements, as a rule, include goods, demand, supply, competition, and prices for goods or services. At all stages, the principal stimulator for the formation of the educational services market in higher education in Ukraine was the chronic underfunding of state higher education institutions. The dissatisfied demand of the population for higher education was also a significant factor in the formation and development of the educational services market. The market for educational services in higher education became developed after Ukraine had gained independence. Commercialization of educational services in higher education, the creation of private higher education institutions, the corresponding institutional transformations, and the legislative framework formation were typical for this stage. As a general scientific basis of the research, a dialectical method of analysis of socio-economic processes was applied. For the theoretical part of the study, historical-logical and abstract-logical methods were used, which allowed determining the key factors that caused the emergence of the educational services market in higher education of Ukraine, as well as to study the evolution of ideas about it. As the information base of the study, a set of legislative and normative acts of Ukraine and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, as well as some research works of domestic and foreign scientists concerning various aspects of the formation of the educational services market in higher education were used. For quantitative assessment of the market relations spread in higher education, statistical methods were used to process both complete and selective information. The basis of our research was the data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine (from 1991 to 2017).