The article analyzes various approaches and grounds for singling out the leading universities. The criteria used in compiling various university ratings are considered; four ideal models are identified and the real ratings are correlated with these models. There is a tendency towards the formation of more balanced ratings, which take into account many aspects of the superiority of universities. Also considered is the concept of a world-class university, proposed by P. Altbach, D. Salmi and I. D. Frumin. The concept of the «frontier university» is proposed, which reflects a special type of university leadership and the type of development institution adequate to the challenges of the 21st century. The special position, mission, task, subjects of frontier university activity are considered. It acts as a subject and «platform» for deployment of new directions of science, technology, social practices that expand the horizon of the existence of mankind, create fundamentally new opportunities for cognition, production, social and personal life («set the future»). The University of Berlin, the Higher School of Economics, Kazan Federal University, North-Eastern Federal University, Singularity University are considered as precedents (universities that in some sense implement the idea of the Frontier University).

The article falls under research category. One of the tasks of managing highly qualified personnel is the improvement of attestation system which nowadays is testing the approach based on delegating the right to awarding academic degrees directly to universities. Transition to such system should be gradual and based on solid decisions concerning delegation of such rights to the organizations. The article looks into the problem of forming performance indicators list that would be based on performance indicators used in monitoring efficacy of higher education institutions that might get the right to award academic degrees. The number of possible performance indicators for higher educational institutions’ activities is over 100. The use of all indicators does not seem reasonable as some of them do not affect the ability to get the right of awarding academic degrees and some indicators correlate with each other In order to solve the problem at the first stage 14 most significant indicators of research activities efficacy at educational institutions were chosen from the list of indicators presented in the reports from organizations provided within the framework of monitoring higher educational institutions activities efficacy. These indicators can be divided into 3 groups. On the basis of the data for 2015 a list of higher educational institutions taking the firs 10 positions in terms of overall integral indicator was formed. In order to make the indicators list shorter an analysis of correlation links between indicators within each group was made based on which one indicator was taken from each group. The research employed the methods of system analysis and correlation analysis. The rating of organizations built on three indicators demonstrated that the decrease of data size did no influence the quality of the rating. It lead to the conclusion that three chosen indicators can be recommended for forming the list of higher education institutions allowed to award academic degrees independently. Authors defined threshold figures for these indicators, higher numbers for which allow for including organization into the list under analysis. The novelty of the article is in formulating the basis for qualitative criteria system for providing universities with the right to award academic degrees independently. The article is of interest for researchers and practitioners in the field of highly qualified academic staff management both at the level of educational institutions and at the level of federal executive bodies.

The effectiveness of scientific knowledge generation in the new economy becomes critical for the functioning of the economic system. University is the main «producer» of scientific knowledge and a key actor of economic transformation at each level of analysis (country, region, city). There are many models for evaluating universities’ impact on the regional economies. The aim of the work is the development of a common tool for analysis based on the institutional economic theory. The methodological basis of the work is the model of institutional configuration of knowledge generation. To bridge the artificial gap in the subject-object relationship, the problem has been analyzed on the basis of the methodological unity of the actors, stakeholders and institutions, as well as their interrelations with the environment (natural, political, social, economic, cultural). The authors have proposed an original institutional typology of knowledge generation by universities based on the popular model of corporate knowledge management SECI. By means of this model, the institutions of socialization, externalization, combination and internalization of knowledge were identified. A number of indicators has been formulated that can be used for the purposes of indicative planning and statistical analysis. The results of the work can be also used to conduct further theoretical and applied research in the field of analysis of regional higher education systems. In addition, the model is of potential interest for politicians in the development of regional and national educational policies.

Category: research article. This article analyzes the economic performance of higher education institutions network of the Kyrgyz Republic, and in particular, one of the largest universities in the Kyrgyz Republic from 2013 to 2016. The results of the analysis will be used to develop a change in the financial management mechanism of structural divisions. The planned research is presented in several stages - initially, conceptual documents on the development of education in the Kyrgyz Republic are analyzed, determining the vector of changes in the higher education system; the next stage is the consideration of the Kyrgyz National University statistics as the object of the research. The aim is to carry out a statistical analysis of the university faculties in order to make a decision on financial management of the university. The research results indicated that there are three groups of faculties: the first group of faculties has a salary fund below 50 %; the second group is between 50 % and 100 %; and the third group of faculties is 100 % of income. But the university cannot close down the loss-making faculties (Scientific faculties), primarily due to obligations to the students, and secondly these faculties have the basic scientific potential of the university. The qualitative composition of the natural science faculties is 80-90 %. To stimulate the improvement of economic indicators some specific measures are proposed for financial management of the university. University management should pursue a common financial policy in relation to all the faculties of the university, but at the same time, the university must carry out the differentiation of each faculty according to the total income contribution to the university. The originality of the article is that the author proposes to abandon the faculty system and change to the program management of educational process; and allow educational programs managers to form their own staff, which will attract leading scientists and experts to improve the quality of education. According to the results of the analysis the university may prefer the most cost-effective educational programs; and the programs that show low efficiency - the university may provide subsidies for a limited period of time and give a warning that at the expiration of this period, subsidies will cease, and teachers’ salaries will be calculated in accordance with the program proceeds. The results of the study will be used in the construction of economic and mathematical tools in the university management. The use of economic and mathematical tools in the university management will allow solving the following problems: - implementing scientifically based forecasting of changes in quantitative manifestations of environmental factors; - receiving a reasonable information base for planning the activity of the university; - connecting indicators of the university effectiveness mechanisms with the staff motivation from the perspective of achieving long-term goals of the university.

This article falls under case category. The main aim of the article is the creation of methods and algorithms of financial analysis and managing educational and research processes at universities. In their previous works authors created original financial - mathematical model for budgeting university structural units based on curriculum and financial plans of teaching programs. It is based on per -capita financing of educational institutions working on state order. Besides that authors have developed and even implemented algorithms for forming salary funds for teaching staff of the Departments. There is a significant economic effect of implementing this model, absence of legal limitations for its implementation and good development perspectives. This article is devoted to the construction of financial and mathematical model of financing educational and research structural units aiming at achieving basic target performance indicators of the university efficacy. Developed method can be used at any university based on the analysis of curriculum, research work plans, university and its units’ strategic development programs as well as reports on research work. Implementation of this method leads to improved efficacy of research and teaching process organization, formation of financial mechanism for implementing long-term research academic programs, de-centralization of financial and economic administration and creation of prerequisites for acknowledging chairs and research units as financial responsibility centers. This model is a natural development of normative per capita method of financing university educational activities.

The case-type article describes the experience of implementing financial planning in Volgograd State University. It describes an approach to solving the practical problem of improving university internal efficacy. The gist of the used budgeting-based approach to university financial management is described alongside with its technologies. The article suggests a new methodological basis for designing the process of planning and budgeting the university’s financial and economic activities as well as a method of creating infrastructure for gathering primary indicators, calculating the indicators of business finance-related matters, as well as for the automatization of planning and budgeting process. The authors identified the place of financial planning in the process of formulating and implementing university development strategy. There was chosen a model for planning and budgeting, local documents were worked out to regulate the planning and budgeting process, architecture of complex information system was designed to support planning and budgeting processes. The article enumerates financial responsibility centers, types of plans, income and costs included into the plans. Budgets of the financial responsibility centers were formed. As a result of the research, the authors proved the efficacy of a mixed planning and budgeting model for a regional autonomous university, as well as the feasibility of using its own information support system for the financial planning process.

The article presents results of the research aimed at analyzing the institutional level factors influence over the results of export activities of Russian universities. To accomplish the aim of the research, an econometric analysis of quantitative data on the performance indicators of Russian universities was conducted. The research pool includes 153 universities from all regions of the Russian Federation. Based on the analysis of academic publications on education export efficacy factors, the authors formed a list of institutional level factors supposedly positively influencing the results of university export activities. The data were taken from the reports of the university self-monitoring; from the Monitoring of higher education institution activities efficacy; and from the statistical collection «Export of Russian Educational Services». During the research, the author suggested and tested hypotheses on seven institutional factors positively influencing university export activities efficacy. Linear regression data analysis using the least square method was conducted to test these hypotheses. The research results demonstrated the fact that the growth of foreign students numbers at the university is related to implementation of international double diploma programs and teaching programs diversification. Income from export activities is influenced by network partnership with foreign universities, implementation of short-term incoming academic mobility programs and commercialization level of foreign students training. The popularity of a University brand in the Internet has a positive influence over both numbers of foreign students and income from their training. The hypothesis on positive influence of university activities in the field of transnational education program implementation on export activities results was not proven. This form of export is not sufficiently developed in Russian universities. The regression coefficient meanings for some institutional factors are significant, but not high. This means that in the mid-term perspective universities cannot achieve significant increase of export efficacy by means of only improved institutional performance indicators. Export activities of Russian universities are greatly influenced by external environment factors. Therefore, a positive result can be achieved only by complex approach combining state level measures for attracting foreign students to Russia and by actions of universities in this area. The results obtained are of interest for university executives, as the identified statistically significant dependencies demonstrate perspective university development directions that would facilitate export efficacy. The article observes a limited number of factors. This is stipulated by the fact that some institutional level factors can hardly be quantitatively evaluated and by the limited statistical data on international educational activities of Russian universities. Further research in this field will allow for broadening the number of analyzed institutional factors and studying the mechanism of dependence between factors and university export results in more detail.

The purpose of a review article is the systematization and analysis of the existing legal framework of joint educational programs at both local and state level, identifying the stages of their development and implementation that require additional regulation. Despite the experience of the Russian universities, the key risks of development and implementation of joint educational programs are still the following - incomplete regulatory base and significant differences in its interpretation. The article clarifies the nature and classification of joint educational programs, as one of the types of network educational programs. Authors propose key features of joint educational programs: poly-subject nature, unified curriculum, synchronicity, complementarity, legal basis and parity. The article presents the results of the analysis of the regulatory framework for the development and implementation of joint educational programs in Russian universities on the basis of a comparison with the European experience, in which they are an instrument of formation and development of the European higher education area. Systematization of the stages of development and implementation of joint educational programs and normative documents of the local and state levels helped to identify that the following processes are still not regulated: the formation of the consortium of joint educational programs partners, program management and quality assurance. Taking into account the peculiarities of the Russian system of higher education additional regulation is required concerning admission of students to joint educational programs, funding rules and state accreditation requirements and procedures. However, universities are granted considerable academic freedom in the development and implementation of joint educational programs, ensuring their quality conforms to the European approach to the regulation of higher education and it requires a certain maturity of local normative systems of the universities. The findings can be used by higher educational institutions in the field of improvement of local normative systems for joint educational programs. At the state level, improvement of the legal regulation of such programs has important conceptual value, as they are an example of the transition from the concept of «value chain» to «value network» when a partnership of competitors in the market is no longer a resource but a mechanism for providing services and manufacturing products. Therefore, the development of regulations of joint educational programs is a necessary step for the development of new types of educational products and technology in the higher education of Russia.

The successful cooperation between universities and business is becoming increasingly important in conditions of modern development, characterized by rapid knowledge obsolescence, an increasing level of products and services innovation, globalization of the economy. A state that promotes networking between business, universities and government structures gets a competitive advantage by rapidly transferring new knowledge created with the introduction of innovative products. Companies and research organizations increase their chances of developing more quickly and efficiently, taking advantage of new opportunities. In addition, there are a number of universities that became drivers of strategic development of regions due to their role as key providers of innovation in the knowledge economy and maintaining communication with industry. The purpose of the study is a comparative analysis and identification of the most successful forms of university-business cooperation in Russia and European countries as a basis for the formation of promising areas of further development. The research is based on a survey of companies conducted in EMCOSU countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Spain) with the participation of Russia in late 2014 within the framework of a consortium of universities, as well as in other European countries. The study revealed that there are both general forms and approaches, and the features of cooperation. «Drivers» and barriers of interaction between universities and business for different countries were identified. The results of the research show promising directions for the university-business cooperation development in Russia and other developing countries.

The research article is devoted to the topic of approbation and introduction of the modern university tutorial model in based on the National Research Tomsk State University activity. The purpose of the article is to identify the prerequisites, reconstruct the existing experience of tutoring at the university, and to analyze the organizational and managerial conditions for implementing the modern university tutoring model in the context of the university transformation during the 5-100 program participation. The novelty of the approach is provided by applying a set of methods - from a comparative historical method to diagnosing a problem field by reconstructing the existing experience of tutoring the students of the university, a sociological focus group with representatives of three groups of the university community (teachers-trainees, professors, students and managers) and a 7S model that allows to identify the mandatory organizational and managerial conditions for the implementation of the modern university tutoring model. The relevance of the research relates to the global transformation of the higher education system towards a personified approach to the subject of education. The university previously claimed to build a picture of the Universum. And in a super complex realitymodel, in the lack of systemic, clarity and completeness, the contradictory nature of the world picture, claims to build a universe in the framework of assembling individual professional and personal meaning for a particular student with his request. The university educational environment, in which various resources of modern science are presented, provides the opportunity for multiple samples in various areas of modern knowledge, the reflection of their experience and, as a consequence, the conscious construction of an individual educational program. The relevance for the university is related to the fact that at Tomsk State University (TSU) in 2017-2018 academic year the Individualization and Tutoring Laboratory implements the project of accompanying students of the university with a high educational potential (HiPO students). This was the order of the rector in August 2017, when thestudents with a high score was enrolled in the university. In creating the modern university tutoring model we appealed to the reconstruction of our own experience in implementing tutoring support for students during 2010-2016. In the community of universities of the Russian Federation there are 8 universities that introduce tutorial support in a different way, providing a new quality of education and forming, setting a trend for the future university community. In the third part of the article, the organizational and managerial conditions for the implementation of the tutoring model of the modern university are given. In conclusion, you can see the theses about the modern university tutoring model potential as an agenda in the system of higher education.

The aim of this work was to identify the existing types of massive open online courses integration into the educational process with the help of assessing the practices adopted by foreign and Russian universities. Besides, the authors identified conditions necessary for successful integration of online courses into academic programs of Russian universities and marked basic advantages and limitation of using MOOC in the educational process. Analysis used the data from academic publications, university regulatory documents, university official sites and 5 expert interviews with executives and administrators of online learning centers from leading Russian universities - members of «National open learning platform» (NOLP) Association. The analysis of MOOC integration into educational process allowed for identifying three main types of online courses inclusion into academic programs: 1) MOOC integration into blended format of learning; 2) replacement of several full-time courses by online disciplines; 3) creating a program of an online master course with all courses taught in online format. Foreign universities have made this technology an essential part of training, therefore creating new environment for education. At the same time, Russian universities do not use this method on a wide-scale basis. Yet there is a legislative basis for MOOC integration into the educational process. This might be related first of all with low awareness of both universities and students of the opportunity of using online courses within the framework of the educational process. Despite the advantages of using online courses, this practice has its risks: 1) researchers have not identified a single unified standard for organizing blended courses; 2) there is no standard for evaluating MOOC quality; 3) we do not know economic and educational effects of integrating online courses into the educational process as well as business - model of online education; 4) courses on certain topics cannot be transferred into online format; 5) there are lecturers’ opposing MOOCs integration into the educational process, and they demonstrate low level of interest in using such courses in the academic program; 6) there are many questions concerning the choice of MOOCs, forming a curriculum with a convenient period of teaching and correct calculation of the results of passing an online course. In order to ensure successful integration of MOOCs into the educational process within Russian universities, the article presents three groups of conditions necessary for implementing two types of mixed models, model with replacing traditional courses by online ones and online maser course model based solely on MOOCs: 1) staff; 2) integration process administration, and 3) functional characteristics of the online platform. The results obtained can be of interest for university executives, as there are practical recommendations for implementing MOOCs into teaching activities. The conditions suggested allow for successful implementation of this teaching technology at both selective and non-selective universities, opening new opportunities for using innovational teaching methods in practice.

This article is a case. It is aimed at defining key problems of preventological work at the university. The article is designed as a phenomenological one using academic methods, questionnaires, interviews. Theoretical and topical coverage of the article includes international and Russian experience, suggestions can be approximated to the scope of CIS university education. As a result, the authors provide justification for the directions of preventological work at the university demonstrating the experience of its organization at the Ural Federal University. Further research should be directed at age and gender peculiarities, it is also possible to engage in more detailed research and analysis of international experience of organizing preventological work at international universities. University management practice can gain from formulating directions for organizing prevenological work. The value of the article is in applied use of obtained results: preventological work at the university should be cohesive and systematic.