Criteria For External Evaluation Of The Quality Of Educational Activities Of Higher Educational Institutions: The Traditional View On Determination

The article deals with the problem of the need to define criteria for the external evaluation of the quality of the educational activities of the higher educational institutions of Ukraine due to the increasing demands of consumers to educational services and the change in the current approaches of existing legislation to ensuring the quality of higher education. The aim is to determine the criteria and rationale of the external evaluation of the quality of educational activities of higher educational institutions, which will have a systemic rather than fragmented nature of the definition. Justification of the criteria was implemented through scientific methods of analysis and synthesis of the existing legislation, international standards and recommendations in the field of assessment of the quality of education through the activation of the mechanism of ranking educational establishments, the best international and national experience in this area and the most important requirements of consumers to educational services. Particular attention is paid to the characterization and synthesis of the criteria (indicators) of evaluation used by the national ranking systems to determine the ranking of higher educational establishments in Ukraine. The following list of criteria is proposed: the quality of education; the quality of practical training of graduates; the quality of research and innovation; the quality of international activities; "a higher educational institution in the eyes of employers and graduates". In the context of each of the criteria key indicators (groups of indicators) of estimates have been proposed. The external quality assessment of educational activities of higher educational institutions can be represented by a one-dimensional integral indicator using the weighting of the criteria for groups or a multi-dimensional cross-sectional profile of the criteria selected to assess the quality. The work is of practical importance for the further development of the national system of ranking of higher educational institutions and evaluation of the quality of higher education, which will not depend on the human factor and will take into account not only the true state of affairs in the field of education, but also the future prospects for its development in the scientific, international and innovation areas.