SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONTEXT OF TRANSFORMATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The author provides her own vision of situation which significantly influences the process of transformation of higher education systems. Integration of numerous political factors determines the formation of university models which are the most effective in a certain historical period. The article details political factors determining the process of transformation of higher education systems in the modern world. Globalization, information development, prevalence of innovations in economics with high labour capacity and industry of knowledge determine the necessity to form cognitariat (a broad layer of the employed workers primarily of immaterial labour). The response from national higher education systems to these challenges is a new stage of transformation. The author comes to the conclusion that universities perform functions which prior were not their remit, the objects of management and specifics of teaching change. A university becomes the centre of net connections and relations, competitiveness and transparency of its activity being intensified.

Keywords

• politics in the sphere of higher education
• transformation of higher education
• institutional diversity of higher education
• differentiation of higher education
• horizontal and vertical differentiation of higher educational institutions