Improving the efficiency of managing higher education institutions: research analysis

The problem of improving the efficiency of higher education institutions (HEI) has existed for many decades, but in recent years it has become increasingly important due to the need to integrate management and decision-making processes to the level of systemic, complexly interrelated development. All this becomes even more acute in the conditions of confrontation of our country with the USA and its satellites in the NATO bloc, when the issues of technological independence, import substitution, further promotion of scientific research, which in the last 30 years was conducted with the use of western equipment, modern foreign technologies and materials, come to the forefront. The very process of information technology dynamics in terms of digitalization, development of computing facilities and systems, technologies of data transmission, storage and processing, as well as means of their analysis using, among other things, artificial intelligence, gives special significance to the problem under consideration.

Over the last 30 years, research in the field of improving the efficiency of HEIs management in Russia has been carried out in line with pro-Western ideologies with the focus on the calculation of indicators of HEIs' performance, necessary for the formation of appropriate ratings, prepared according to the developed methods of various foreign agencies. At the same time, it should be noted that the race for indicators, carried out within the framework of foreign methods, will never allow Russian universities to reach the top positions of world rankings, as these methods are fully oriented to highlighting the advantages of foreign universities, authors, approaches and concepts.

Thus, the actual goal of improving the activity of educational institutions in Russia is the development of such conceptual provisions, methods and models of higher education institutions management, which will contribute to a significant increase in the effectiveness of their activities, taking into account the solution of state and regional tasks in the field of industrial renewal, development of territories, introduction of digital technologies, etc. Undoubtedly, higher education institutions should become one of the main participants of this process.

• 1 . Foreign studies in the field of improving the efficiency of university management

Studies on improving the management of higher education institutions have a long history.

Back in the 70s of the last century, scientists and specialists in the field of management by analogy with the creation of approaches and concepts of functioning of industrial enterprises realized the need to present an educational institution as an integral system, which could be structured and developed in a variety of ways with the use of appropriate methodological and technical developments [1–3].

One of the first major works [4] on the problem of implementing strategic management in higher education institutions proposed the following innovations:

• –    The need to form administrative management structures in HEIs, which would streamline the existing various academic units (moreover, it was postulated that the academic staff of HEIs should take an active non-indirect participation in the development of management decisions together with the relevant employees of administrative structures). The aim of all this was to “bring the decision-making process out of the closet”, to make it “explicit, clear and public” [4];

• –    The development of universities in the context of changes in the world around them. This should lead to universities finding their niche in the higher education ecosystem, “behaving like an organism that needs to feed, change and adapt to its environment” [4].

These ideas were perceived by many at that time as a new way of thinking about how universities should plan their development. Later on, they received a concrete reference in the adopted and implemented strategies of American [5–11], European [12–18], Australian, Chinese and other universities [19–21]. It should be noted that all these examples reflect the specifics and features of universities and their adaptation to changing conditions.

The improvement of the above methodologies further led to the fact that by now the main components that constitute the essence of the strategic approach to university management have been formulated: goal setting, strategic analysis, development of strategy and its implementation plan, strategic changes and strategic control [22–25].

Thus, the idea of a strategic model of a university seeking to gain an advantage over its competitors by providing better services was formed. The implementation of this strategic model allowed HEIs with higher indicators, measured in different ways, to receive priority funding in larger amounts at the expense of reducing the financial support to institutions of higher education with lower indicators.

Thus, it should be stated that the overwhelming part of research in the field of strategic management of higher education institutions, related to the process of rating universities, does not allow it to become a panacea for the real development of higher education institutions. It translates the results of universities' work into the plane of “artificial reality”, which in many respects does not reflect the actual achievements of managerial activity of heads of educational institutions.

In addition to the concepts of strategic management of universities, other management ideas of different nature have appeared in the foreign scientific literature in recent years. These include:

• –    an approach to attract professional managers to work within the administrative structures of universities [26]. This practice is aimed at ensuring that university managers can manage the activities of educational institutions more effectively;

• –    the approach to the formation of new mechanisms for assessing innovation activity, which can be realized in two directions: the definition and selection of other rating indicators, or the transition to other, more elaborate and qualitative assessment procedures [27];

• –    the concept of forming a model of a digital university [28], characterized by network organization, flexible structure, quickly adapting to changes in the external environment, the development of management decisions based on data, the use of advanced methods of control and reporting due to the digitalization of all processes;

• –    search for alternative effective models of organization of universities of the future, free from the frameworks, standards, rules that have been established in classical universities for centuries [29].

• 2 . Studies on improving the efficiency of university management in Russia

  It goes without saying that the issues of development of higher education institutions in our country were studied even in the period of the Soviet Union. However, the change of social order in Russia that took place in the 1990s led to the fact that domestic educational organizations began to be regarded as fully similar institutions in the West.

A number of foreign studies are also devoted to the interaction of universities with industrial enterprises, organizational and management structures of territorial nature and other institutions and organizations [30–36]. These ideas were developed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and are associated with the modernization of the regional economy based on the active use of knowledge. One of the ideas of this kind is to find mechanisms of effective interaction between universities, whose management area includes education, research and social services, on the one hand, and various objects of regional importance, on the other hand, whose management area is focused on education, innovation and cultural needs [31].

At the same time, the expected results of university activities include: development of new economic and commercial concepts, contribution to science and technological innovation, development of local communities, innovation in environmental protection. Such cooperation with industry, population and other subjects should eventually play an active role in economic growth and solving complex social problems [27].

Domestic scientists also analyzed foreign studies. In particular, the models of engineering education [37], technology transfer [38], cases of strategic management implementation, issues of university typologization and various approaches to management [35, 36, 39] were considered.

It should be noted some reasons why the developments of foreign researchers are not very suitable for practice in the management of domestic universities. One of such considerations is the fact that in our country higher education institutions have insufficient autonomy in the formation and adoption of managerial decisions, which should be coordinated with higher educational structures (departments, ministries), as well as state authorities of regional and federal scales. In addition, the opportunities for entrepreneurial activity of universities are largely limited and significantly constrained by the current tax legislation and the unwillingness of a significant part of university staff to engage in such activities.

Among the earliest studies in the field of educational management in modern Russia, one should note the attempts to fully transfer the achievements of Western concepts and approaches to the theory of development and practice of Russian universities [40–43]. However, the current state of affairs and specific features of Russian universities are so different from their foreign counterparts that the use of such Western experience has not yielded positive results. The use of strategic management theory of business structures to the development of educational institutions did not bring the desired results either.

By 2008, a more or less structured set of methodological recommendations on the implementation of strategic management in Russian universities was formed in Russian education, which contained, in addition to numerous examples of the development and implementation of strategic plans, also contained a description of methods and tools of strategic management [44, 45]. Nevertheless, today this complex is largely outdated and does not allow university managers to achieve the necessary effect.

Numerous publications [42, 44, 46–58] have developed various concepts of strategic management of educational institutions, which were applied by the heads of a number of universities in our country.

In this context, we can distinguish the main directions of this practice: the approach to management taking into account the positions of stakeholders [46–48, 59]; project-oriented model of the university [42, 49, 50]; process model of university management [51]; various methods of designing programs of strategic development of universities [46, 54–58]; recommendations on the use of marketing tools as a means of increasing the competitiveness of universities [52, 53], ecosystem approach [39].

It is also necessary to note a whole group of analytical studies concerning the improvement of the quality of educational results [60–64]. Researchers distinguish a number of main groups of factors affecting the quality of education [62]. These include:

• –    formulation of the mission of university development taking into account its priority directions and cultural features;

• –    formation of a set of educational programs and their filling in accordance with the actual needs of students and employers, as well as taking into account the state and regional requirements;

• –    creation of digital infrastructure of the educational institution, carried out in full compliance with the development of digitalization of regional and state authorities;

• –    development and use of modern programs and platforms for e-learning and assessment of educational results;

• –    organization of a comfortable living and learning environment for undergraduate and postgraduate students;

• –    ensuring the inclusion of freshmen and foreign students in the educational process through adaptation programs;

• –    creation of feedback procedures between the participants and managers of the educational process;

• –    development and management of quality assessment procedures.

• 3 . Analysis of foreign and domestic approaches to the formation of conceptual provisionsto improve the efficiency of managing higher education institutions

Among other measures to improve the quality of educational results, some other measures are also highlighted today: preparing the transition to a student-centered model of higher education institution, using procedures for the formation of individual educational trajectories; providing access through personal accounts of students and teachers to electronic resources of universities; creating a complex of “smart classrooms” in universities; using models and algorithms that process a wide variety of information based on the methods of big data analysis [65–74].

It should be noted that recently the number of publications concerning the problems of ensuring closer interaction between universities and industrial enterprises of the defense complex and other high-tech industries has increased [75–87]. In this regard, universities should make some significant efforts to make such a linkage as constructive and effective as possible. This is the only way to ensure that the production process of the above-mentioned enterprises can be based on effective domestic technologies and developments [87–89].

The various studies on the improvement of higher education institutions' management presented in Sections 1 and 2 show that the topics of these developments are mainly focused on the issues of strategic management of universities. At the same time, the issues of operational management of higher education institutions are also studied, but to a much lesser extent and volume, and their results are not presented as significant and important as for the concepts of strategic management. The latter, in the author's opinion, is quite obvious and should be oriented to the interests of specific higher education institutions within the framework of their specifics and peculiarities of development.

As already mentioned in Section 1, the problems of strategic management in higher education institutions abroad, which have been studied for many decades, have formed several main directions:

• –    the need to achieve consistency of managerial decisions of representatives of administrative and academic management;

• –    expectation of innovations in response to the obsolescence of technologies and knowledge;

• –    competition of universities for funding through the achievement of certain indicators;

• –    the complexity of transferring the tools and methods of strategic management applicable in commercial organizations for profit maximization to the activities of an educational institution pursuing other goals.

It goes without saying that a number of previously developed concepts of strategic management of higher education institutions have ceased to be relevant and are mainly of historical and analytical nature.

By now, strategic concepts of development of different types of higher education institutions have been formed, examples of which are large research universities, general education institutions with high social accessibility, entrepreneurial universities, open universities and others.

The implementation of these and other concepts of strategic management of higher education institutions is based on a number of previously mentioned well-known approaches, which can be combined into two large groups: comprehensive approaches, focused on a complete study of the future picture of university development, and problematic approaches, focusing on a limited set of alternative programs for the development of an educational organization.

Considering the domestic research in the field of strategic management of higher education institutions, it should be noted that the overwhelming part of these studies, to a greater or lesser extent, repeats the already established approaches to the management of higher education institutions, formulated in foreign sources.

As a result, the concepts of strategic development of universities presented in Section 2 are, to a large extent, a kind of linking of the well-known Western concepts (methods and development programs) to the conditions of functioning of higher education institutions in our country [40, 44, 47, 54].

It should be noted that the development of strategic management concepts for Russian universities was mainly carried out by domestic scientists and specialists in economic sciences [39, 46, 56, 68].

It should be emphasized that most foreign and domestic developments in the field of university management are focused on the inclusion of universities in world rankings (THE, QS, ARWU, etc.) and increasing their positions in these rankings [27, 35, 44, 48, 54].

It seems that the formation of conceptual provisions to improve the efficiency of higher education institutions management in Russia should be focused not only and not so much on improving the ratings of universities, but on making their activities much more productive than at present. This can only be achieved by ensuring that universities develop in accordance with the key objectives of the development of the respective regions and the country as a whole, and are oriented not on secondary, but on the main technical directions of the promising dynamics of the national economy. This is what is mostly lacking in those developments in the field of university efficiency, which are still being carried out to improve their position in the rating hierarchies of various foreign agencies. A significant disadvantage of the domestic concepts for improving the efficiency of universities is that the Russian developments in this area are not aimed at interaction with federal and regional government bodies, which support the most important industrial enterprises of the region, producing products for the defense-industrial complex, and other areas of urban and region-forming importance. It is very important to realize that many economic concepts and developments to improve the competitiveness of universities are not universal. They are applicable mainly for universities of widely demanded specialties (economic, legal, design, etc.). At the same time, they do not contribute much to improving the efficiency of educational institutions in high-tech engineering and technical areas, which are so necessary for the national economy.

It should also be noted that a detailed presentation of concepts and developments in the field of improving the efficiency of HEIs is hardly appropriate. The full disclosure of university strategies can be presented only as part of the documents of official use in the interaction of public authorities with universities, industrial enterprises and other objects involved in these developments.

Thus, the conceptual provisions for improving the effectiveness of universities should include:

• –    clear positioning of federal state and regional interests in the development of the respective constituent entities of the Russian Federation, cities and territories, with the participation in this development of higher educational institutions stationed in the respective regions;

• –    vision of the heads of educational institutions in the region on the development of their institutions, taking into account the respective positions of federal and regional government bodies and other stakeholders;

• –    assessment of the necessity and expediency of interaction of educational institutions with industrial enterprises and business communities of the region and other territories of the country;

• –    development and use of relevant models and technologies in educational institutions and other facilities in the region, especially digital development technologies;

• –    ensuring the improvement of the quality of personnel training for industrial enterprises, organizations and institutions of the region at all levels of vocational education, as well as improving the qualification of industrial and economic workers in the field of digital, information and management technologies.

Conclusion

Considering the results of foreign and domestic studies in the field of improving the effectiveness of management of educational institutions, it can be seen that to date, various approaches, concepts, models and developments aimed at achieving more effective results of strategic and operational management of higher education institutions are still largely contradictory.

In foreign concepts and approaches to the strategic management of educational institutions, despite the fact that they were developed in a much longer period of time than in our country, the rating approach to the evaluation of the work of higher education institutions prevails. As a result, the methods and technologies for improving the ratings of universities, having come to the forefront, in some ways do not allow foreign universities to develop as they might have developed in the absence of rating dogma.

In a shorter period of time, having passed the way from free floating to the similar foreign practice of chasing rating indicators among the world totality of universities, domestic universities are also far from creating the most constructive and effective mechanisms of university management. Transitioning from one “fashionable” concepts of educational institutions development to another, it is not always possible to achieve the goal of effective development of universities. In this regard, the modern concept of development of Russian universities should refuse from the fact that the main ways and mechanisms of university development are rigidly subordinated to the desire to achieve maximum ratings in the world hierarchy of universities.

Thus, the composition and content of the main directions of development of Russian universities can and should be based on the conceptual scientific provisions presented in Section 3 of this article. HEI managers should abandon the task of chasing the increase of ratings and fully focus their efforts on identifying and using the most important means and methods to achieve the goals of university management with the least expenditure of time, material and human resources.