Assessment of institutional autonomy of higher education institutions: methodical approach

Abstract

In order to reform and modernize the system of higher education, an important step is to assess the constituent parts of the institutional autonomy of higher education institutions (HEI), which allows, on the basis of a combination of the level of autonomy of higher education systems of countries and their universities, and indicators of the quality of scientific and educational activities of the HEI to ensure a unified approach to information and analytical assessment of university autonomy in general. This fact proves the necessity of developing a methodological approach to the assessment and management of institutional autonomy of the HEI. The study carried out a comparative analysis of the models of university autonomy, international and national approaches to the assessment of the components of institutional autonomy such as organizational, personnel, academic and financial. The methodical approach to evalution the institutional autonomy of the HEI is developed. The proposed methodological approach is aimed at the formation of an information space for simultaneous comparison and assessment of the level of institutional autonomy of HEI and indicators that affect it. This approach combines the results of grouping the autonomy of higher education systems of the countries and their HEI according to homogeneous groups and the results of calculating the integral indicator of the quality of scientific and educational activity within each component of institutional autonomy, which allows to determine the position of a specific HEI on the level of autonomy in the proposed matrix of recognition of the situation. In addition, the promising result of the proposed methodological approach is to further determine the reasons for the transition from the quasi-quantum to quadrant and to formulate appropriate management measures to enhance the quality of the scientific and educational activities of the HEI and increase the autonomy of universities.