Management of innovation-educational activities of higher education institution

Sergey Ermasov, Daria Cherchimtseva

MANAGEMENT OF INNOVATION-EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION

Russian state policy declares the innovation way of development among the most important goals. It leads to increasing of quality of life, stabilizing of economic growth and in perspective to knowledge-based economy, which all are the strategic national priorities. In this context it seems obvious that the professional education should answer the new demands of market and society[1]. Russian higher education meets the innovation challenges – the most future-oriented domain at one side and the specific progressive way of development at the other. The fusion of these two elements provides a unique mechanism for social development.

Higher education institutions, especially those regional ERICs (Educational & Research Innovation Centers), possess high innovation potentials and certainly can be included in innovational segment of macroeconomic system[2]. According to S. Slaughter, L. Leslie, the development of academic capitalism obliges the universities to become a kind of business enterprises on educational market[3]. The entrepreneurial activity of universities has many innovation features, such as introduction of newest pedagogical techniques, including the e-learning and concept of lifelong learning, IT, and modern management tools.

New demands of innovation development also make a significant impact on traditional educational process. The product which university provides for educational market is defined by the term “educational service“ and comprises the actions of transferring to customer the required information, knowledge, abilities and skills, which satisfy his educational requirements, by means of teaching and training. The professional training is falling under influence of business changes – now the qualified specialist should possess some abilities beyond his qualification, and innovation thinking, adaptability to changes, capacity for management of IT systems are among them. We believe the process of training of such innovative specialist should also feature the innovation elements and requires the modification of traditional schemes. All these and many others attributes of modern business environment leads to arising of new type of educational service, what we call “innovation-educational service” describing by the following characteristics:

1)  it supposes not only mere transfer of knowledges, but acquirement of basic competences allowing the student to gain experience and knowledge by self-training and to produce new knowledges (what provides the foundation for lifelong learning);

2)  developed in cooperation with business environment, it contains many practical elements and applied researches;

3)  the entrepreneurial ideas are forming the basis of educational courses;

4)  the problem-oriented interdisciplinary approach to learning of natural sciences, humanities and technical sciences;

5)  the integration of educational process, fundamental sciences and applied researches is resulting in production of new knowledge;

6)  teachers have freedom in choosing educational technologies, methods and tools and are encouraged to create author’s courses and materials; students are free to choose courses according to their needs.

Innovation-educational service should not be described only as a new teaching course or implementations of modern educational technologies, which themselves are the novelties[4]. The distinctive feature of innovation consists in practical effect of obtained knowledges and skills. Innovation-educational service is focused on practical skills, and when a graduate student gains a positive effect of them in labor market, the designed novelty becomes the innovation in full sense of the term.

Innovation-educational process is an integrated group of logically related educational activities, leading to obtaining a qualification. The primary element of the process is teaching discipline. Considering chairs of the faculty as direct producers of innovation-educational services, we suppose the chairs should use the opportunities to manage the portfolio of its products. We mean by this two ways of management – educational and financial. Chair represents a cost center, on the assumption of financial resources of university are decentralized[5]. The total cost of portfolio is the sum of variable costs of disciplines. The variable costs are changing according to stages of educational process and life cycle of discipline. The fixed costs should be taken into account on faculty level.

The problem of financial decentralization and independence of chair’s finances is the subject of wide speculation in academic circles. It remains a crucial question especially in large ERICs that remain state institutions and receive funds from federal budget. However, the raise of non-budget revenues and multichannel financing calls for actual management tools to be used. It is particularly important for innovation-educational service because this type of educational service is market-oriented and requiring payment. To justify the business approach to innovation-educational service we use some aspects of theory of public good[6]. Pure public good is opposed to private good (products and services for individual consumption) and is characterized by non-rivalness, or in other words, indivisibility in consumption, and by non-excludability or inappropriability. This means that pure public good is widely available for all consumers; the consumption of it by one person does not exclude the other. According to this, we can consider educational services as both public good and private good. As public good higher educational services make a positive external effect on social development, the benefits are the increasing of social stability and intellectual wealth of society. Education becomes a factor of economic growth as a result of human capital production. On the other hand, educational services have many features of private good (especially in case of high school) – they give many advantages to consumer in his future activities in labor market. The consumers often are self-sufficient and ready to pay for their education.

In our opinion, higher education should be considered as mixed public good. Only fundamental courses can be qualified as pure public good. On chair’s level we find all three types of good – pure, private and mixed – in variety of teaching disciplines. For example, philosophy is classic fundamental discipline, meets the requirements of pure good; philosophy of financial strategies is mixed good as contains many practical aspects; financial management is applied discipline and private good. Structure of production costs also varies by type of discipline. Fundamental subjects are sensitive to quality of academic resources; applied subjects require more material and information resources.

The separation by types of good let us make an assumption of separation of chair’s financial resources. Teaching of fundamental subjects according to state standards should be financed from federal budget funds; applied disciplines, especially those custom-built innovation-educational services, which are paid, should be financed from non-budget funds. Naturally, in practice this approach entails management problems, but new market demands and expansion of paid educational services asks for reorganization of management of higher education institutions. In conditions of limited resources it becomes very important to understand the structure of innovation-educational process and costs of each component of it, because this makes a profound effect on economic effectiveness of university.

[1] «Concepts of innovation policy in Russian Federation for period up to 2010 and further»: Draft bill [E-document]. – Internet address: http://www. *****/img/uploaded/.doc.

[2] Zhits, G. I. Innovation Potential of High School: Parameters / G. I. Zhits. – Saratov: SSTU, 2001. – P. 83.

[3] Slaughter, S. Academic Capitalism. Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University / S. Slaughter, L. L. Leslie. – Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997.

[4] The differences between innovation and novelty are described for example in: Ermasov, S. V. Innovation Management / S. V. Ermasov, N. B. Ermasova. – Moscow: Higher education, 2007.

[5] Theory of responsibility centers, cost centers among them, was introduced by John A. Higgins in 1950s and was successfully implemented in financial management of business enterprises.

[6] The foundations of theory of public good was laid by P. Samuelson, E. Lindahl, K. Wicksell, J. Stiglitz, A. Atkinson in 1950-60s; in Russia Yu. Fedorova, O. Il’in, M. Lukashenko are developing a theory of higher education as public good.