Competition among Universities: Conceptual Analysis

The transition to the knowledge economy focused attention on the higher education system development and its problems, and put the universities in the situation of competition for limited resources. Free and controlled competition brings a chain of interrelated, sometimes contradictory concepts applied to higher education as a socially significant area. The authors of this research article by means of conceptual analysis aim at identifying the relationship between the concepts of «competition», «competitiveness», «efficiency», and «cooperation» regarding the higher education system. Competition and cooperation are considered to be factors which increase the efficiency of universities’ functioning. At the same time, there are contradictions in the justifications for the need to create competitive conditions for universities and in the definitions of the concept of efficiency, University is understood to be a commercial organization, its indicators being locked in its internal environment, whereas its main functions (reproduction of intellectual capital, improving the quality of human resources, orientation to the needs of the labor market) come to be out of sight. No less limited is the concept of competition, which is represented through the index of monopolization, calculated mostly through the proportion of students enrolled, beyond taking into account the peculiarities of the Russian higher education system. However, the works on competition and financing draw attention to the public good created by universities, which is not always tangible and requires the financial participation of the government. Thus, the discussions on universities’ competition and effectiveness in the context of their association with the commercial sector omit a number of socially significant elements of higher education and science.