PRIVATE RUSSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: PERSPECTIVES OF THE DEVELOPMENT IN THE MODERN RUSSIA

The objective of the article is to analyze the existing situation and to predict of the perspectives of the development of the higher education institutions in the private sector of the Russian education system. At the heart of changes in the education area was the transformation of the planned Soviet model and the creation of an open market economy. In the 1990s under the influence of a number of the factors, the private educational institutions began to be established in the Russian system of a higher education actively. The paper presents an analysis of the several stages in the development of the private universities since the period of their establishment in the Russian system of a higher education up to now.

Survey, content analysis, generalization, interpretation, graphical methods were used by the researchers. Statistical methods were used as the main methods for summarizing data submitted by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, State Statistical agency and Russian private universities. It were analyzed the provisions of the legislation in the field of education which changed several times during the research period.

This study identifies that for the first time the Law on Education (1992) introduced the definition of "non-state educational institution". To the private higher education, institutions are the non-state higher education institutions in which training is financed by households, religious organizations, cooperative organizations, state or non-state commercial companies.

In Soviet time, the universities that were founded by the Central Union of Consumer Societies, were the unique non-state higher education institutions. The system of a consumer cooperation financed some higher education institutions that trained the highly qualified personnel for the cooperative sector of economy. We found that from the period of 1993 to 2009 significant growth in number of the private universities was observed: in 2008/2009 academic year at the private universities 1298, 3 thousand students, or 21% of all students. Since 2010, there has been a negative dynamics of the number of students studying in the private universities.

The study showed that Russian private universities could be divided into four groups. Reduction of the number of the students in these groups takes place unevenly. The successful universities that seek to increase quality of education with the stable or increasing number of students treat the first group. The second group of the private universities successfully competes with state universities. The greatest reduction of the number of the students is characteristic of the third group that includes the private universities with the low indicators of quality of education. The fourth group consists of the universities that have ceased their work.

The findings allow us to show that further development of the private universities is a major problem, the solution of which depends on the several factors among them we highlight the creation by the state of the equal conditions of a competition between public and private universities, the quality of the educational process, the demand for specialists graduating from the private universities, the solvency of the population, the demand for the educational services that are not satisfied with the public institutions of a higher education.