The criterial indicators of universities for granting to them the right to award academic degrees

The article falls under research category. One of the tasks of managing highly qualified personnel is the improvement of attestation system which nowadays is testing the approach based on delegating the right to awarding academic degrees directly to universities. Transition to such system should be gradual and based on solid decisions concerning delegation of such rights to the organizations. The article looks into the problem of forming performance indicators list that would be based on performance indicators used in monitoring efficacy of higher education institutions that might get the right to award academic degrees. The number of possible performance indicators for higher educational institutions’ activities is over 100. The use of all indicators does not seem reasonable as some of them do not affect the ability to get the right of awarding academic degrees and some indicators correlate with each other In order to solve the problem at the first stage 14 most significant indicators of research activities efficacy at educational institutions were chosen from the list of indicators presented in the reports from organizations provided within the framework of monitoring higher educational institutions activities efficacy. These indicators can be divided into 3 groups. On the basis of the data for 2015 a list of higher educational institutions taking the firs 10 positions in terms of overall integral indicator was formed. In order to make the indicators list shorter an analysis of correlation links between indicators within each group was made based on which one indicator was taken from each group. The research employed the methods of system analysis and correlation analysis. The rating of organizations built on three indicators demonstrated that the decrease of data size did no influence the quality of the rating. It lead to the conclusion that three chosen indicators can be recommended for forming the list of higher education institutions allowed to award academic degrees independently. Authors defined threshold figures for these indicators, higher numbers for which allow for including organization into the list under analysis. The novelty of the article is in formulating the basis for qualitative criteria system for providing universities with the right to award academic degrees independently. The article is of interest for researchers and practitioners in the field of highly qualified academic staff management both at the level of educational institutions and at the level of federal executive bodies.