Abstract:

The paper is motivated by the fact that the quality education has become a real strategic resource for the development of a modern society. Public policy is directed on continuous improvement of education quality with the application of a market's and administrative methods of the regulation. The aim of this paper is to highlight that, firstly, the positive role of such a government tool for improving the quality of a higher education as the monitoring the effectiveness of Russian universities; secondly, the need for changes in approaches and indicators of monitoring the effectiveness of Russian universities; thirdly, the need for the implementation of the proposals for the development of a government monitoring system taking into account the new structure of the educational area.

The methods of study included observation, survey, analysis of legislative acts and state programs for the development of education, generalization, statistical and graphical methods.

State monitoring of the effectiveness of Russian universities is carried out on the basis of the provisions of Russian Government Decree called "On the Education Monitored in the Education System" (2013) and in accordance with Articles 97 of the Federal Law "On Education in the Russian Federation" (2012) .Efficiency monitoring is performed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia (MESR) among the public and private higher education institutes annually starting from 2013.The main objects of monitoring are the educational, research and development, international, financial and economic activity of the higher education institution as well the infrastructure and the graduate employment.

During the period from 2013 to 2015, the positive role of this monitoring was expressed that weak higher education institutions which quality of education did not correspond to the threshold indicators were revealed. On the basis of monitoring of MESR has provided a great job on the optimization of a network of educational institutes by the way of a reorganization and a liquidation of the universities with the low-quality educational services which activity had some signs of a semi-legal issue of diplomas.

The negative aspects of government monitoring related to the fact that, firstly, indicators show the quantitative performance indicators and these indicators do not take into account the quality of training of specialists with higher education, secondly, indicators do not take into account the different levels of the public funding for the universities; thirdly, at present there are new categories of universities with their own goals and objectives.

Our findings offer a new approach to State monitoring the effectiveness of Russian universities that can contribute to the improvement of the quality of higher education. To the end of this study, the authors describe the proposed changes of the government monitoring system based on the content of the concept of "efficiency" and the new structure of the educational area.

Keywords:

Higher education, monitoring, indicators of monitoring, effectiveness of the universities, structure of the educational area, quality education.