Regulating workload of lecturers: challenges and search for solution

The article is of problem type and is devoted to studying perspectives of Russian universities staff potential. Existing rates for academic and teaching staff salaries viewed in relation to achieving target indicators of “average monthly salary of ATS compared to average salary in the Russian Federation” and “number of students per one ATS member” initiate mass staff numbers reductions at universities. The authors justify the need for legal regulation of higher education academic and teaching staff workload as a prerequisite for protecting its staff potential. Using the example of Federal State educational standard in specialization “Economics” authors prove that standard offers comfortable conditions for educational activities (less than 400 in class hours per one lecturer). However real practice shows chronical “overload” of a lecturer which has systematic influence on education quality in a strategic perspective. Solving this system building contradiction of per capita financing between the need to support target ratio lecturer/student number and the need to maintain quality of graduates requires creating an environment where increased productivity of lecturers will be achieved not by extensive methods (increased number of disciplines) but by intensive ones aimed at increasing productivity in all its aspects. System building requirement is development and legal regulation of afternoon workload with a fixed number of disciplines per one ATS member that can be taught without decreasing quality indicators (2 or 3 disciplines) (regulation of ultimate classroom workload). Solution to the problem of providing quality of training and improving its profitability requires solving the contradiction between forming and financing order for personnel training for private companies by the state and practical absence of participation (in terms of financing and content) of real customers. This suggests developing a program of state and private partnership in the field of higher education identifying target co-financing indicators for strategic perspective. Interaction between universities and real economy is possible in the context of stable financing of fundamental and innovative research at universities. At midterm perspective it would allow for attracting financing from commercial sector in the amount comparable to state financing. Fundamental and innovative research should be aimed at creating educational innovations and developing efficacy evaluation criteria. In such a context it is relevant to make changes in per capita financing system in terms of applying coefficients to the components of basic cost norms considering a quality of educational and academic activities of the university. The article is aimed at university management representatives. The results of conducted analysis and suggested approaches can be used by legislators in analyzing strategic initiatives in the field of higher education and university management in the process of altering educational organization development strategy.