Development of the modern Russian market of online education in terms of the knowledge society

Introduction. In recent years, an online education market has emerged in Russia with proven technologies and significant financial turnover. The range of courses offered to the consumer is quite wide (marketing, management, humanities, IT, etc.). The purpose of the article is to present a classification of the online courses offered on the Russian market by subject matter and technical tools on the basis of the results of the study conducted, as well as to trace the dynamics of the market capacity for 2014-2021. Materials and Methods. Russian online education market at the present stage of its development was the object of the research. The empirical material included: a statistical analysis of the thematic diversity of online courses on the Russian market; a secondary analysis of the Online Education Barometer questionnaire for 2019, RBC's ranking of the 35 largest Russian private companies providing services in the field of online education; education market studies for 2017, 2018 and 2020. Results. The Russian online education market capacity rapidly rose on 90 times for 2014-2019, from 0.4 to 36.5 billion rubles, which indicates the explosive growth of online education popularity. The thematic diversity of online courses is determined by the main educational society needs (programming, it-technologies, marketing and business administration). The thematic focus on the Russian “state” platforms corresponds to the education areas of the Russian offline universities. Discussion and Conclusion. The market for online education in Russia exponentially grows. On the one hand, the high demand for online courses can be explained by increasing of knowledge-intensive work number. On the other hand, labor realizes that knowledge and skills are a guarantee of employment. The diversity of online disciplines correlates with the idea of mutual incentives of supply and demand. Indeed, the most of courses are business, IT and design orientated. The article will be useful to universities' chiefs and private educational companies planning to expand their online courses; for those who are planning to enter the Russian online education market and looking for perspective directions; for researchers and business analytics of the education market.