Aspekti Publìčnogo Upravlìnnâ (Aug 2016)
Educational clusters as a tool ofpublic policy on the market of educational services
Abstract
Due to the new challenges, the implementation of cluster technology can be considired to be one of the innovative and promising tools of national and regional economy’ competitiveness raise. The cluster approach can be used is in different areas, but most attention in thie article has been paid to the problems of industrial clusters. At the same time, educational clusters remain to be poorly implemented in practice and, consequently, they are less studied theoretically. The aim of the article is to study the features of formation of educational clusters, to determine the theoretical foundations of the process and to prove the necessity to use the cluster approach in the process of the Ukrainian educational system’s management improvement in modern conditions. The aim of the article has led to the solution of such problems as: to give the definition of “education cluster”; to find out the specifics of the application of the cluster approach in education; to analyze main global trends of the educational sector’s clustering, to determine the classification of educational cluster in the world; to offer functional model of the educational cluster, based on socio-economic interaction of the cluster. The educational cluster is a union of closely related and geographically closely placed educational institutions, which promote joint development and growth of competitiveness of each separate ones. This is aimed at the improvement of innovation and quality of manpower’s training both on the regional and national labor market. It has been proven that the cluster approach of the organization of regional educational institutions transforms the situational contacts between enterprises, institutions and organizations into the system sustainable partnerships, stimulates the implementation of joint projects, and helps to reduce the total cost of the educational development, science and innovation development. It increases the efficiency of such structure, optimizes the available resources. As a result, the innovation activity of cluster membersis developing. However, there are the important factors such as the improvement of education and training systems of future teachers, its readiness to implement innovations in the region, to support the innovation and methodological sides of the educational process, to create opportunities for innovation and to improve the institutional framework and distribution system of knowledge and technologies. Due to this, the innovative educational cluster has been determined as a voluntary association of geographically close interacting entities, educational institutions, government, banking and private sector, innovative enterprises/organizations infrastructure. Such interaction is characterized by the production of competitive educational, cultural, social services, the availability of the agreed development strategy aimed at the interests of each participant and the region being a territory of cluster’s localization.
Keywords
