Quality of life and quality of education: the problem of correlation

The paper presents the analysis of the most common methods for measuring quality of life. It showed that there is no universal relationship between the quality of life and the quality of education despite the fact that education is one of the key indicators of the most of methodologies for assessment of life quality. The reason for the lack of a simple relationship between quality of education and quality of life is explained by difference in models of economic development of the countries of the world included in these ratings. Therefore, it is not quite correct to use existing methods for measuring of life quality for countries and regions with different types of economy and levels of economic development. The explicit relationship between the quality of education and quality of life can be traced only for the countries with innovative economy where the human capital is the main factor of economic development. The level of education has no significant impact to quality of life for countries with the resource-based economy, whereas the increase of quality of education in developing countries can lead to its reduction due to lack of opportunities to apply the knowledge in their professional activity. If quality of education does not guarantee practical implementation of the acquired knowledge and high social status, it leads to contradiction between the intent to implement knowledge and lack of opportunity to do it. It can be solved only by creating the necessary conditions for development of high-tech industries. High level of education in the Russian Federation does not guarantee high quality of life due to weak development of innovative industries. To correct this situation Russia needs a series of measures to be assumed to develop hightech business sphere. Business interest in high quality of education will be the driving force to improve its quality in the Russian Federation, and this is the way to directly connect quality of education and quality of life, which is typical for highly developed countries.