Assessing the effectiveness of state programmes for education development

The state of the Russian university system is largely determined by the focus and content of state programmes for education development. This research article aims to critically analyze these programmes and contains a description of the original method for assessing their effectiveness. The method is based on comparing planned and real readings of target indicators, thus allowing to identify the «weak» places of the programmes, and can be used for working out new regulatory documents. The author shows that state programmes for education development have a number of systemic deficiencies and require external control by the university community over their performance. There are made two assumptions. First, the qualitative aspects of a programme, which are not quantitatively reflected in it, are not taken into account when assessing its effectiveness. Second, the comparison of planned and real readings of target indicators can be a tool for evaluating the programmes effectiveness. The degree of efficiency is assumed to be equal to the proportion of those indicators for which the real reading exceeded the target level. The analysis of four state programmes for education development shows that the real reading of the considered indicators was less than the target level. This result indicates a weak (or zero) effectiveness of state programmes for the higher education development, as far as achieving their goals is concerned. The author sees the solution of this problem in adding the mandatory broad discussion of the programmes by the scientific and pedagogical community to the procedure of working out and approving them. In order to strengthen public control over the higher education development programmes implementation, the author proposes to harmonize target indicators of programmes with indicators taken into account in the forms of official reporting and in the current system of monitoring universities.