EDUCATION AS A DETERMINING FACTOR OF NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between the level of competitiveness of the national economy and the indicator of the development of education. The establishment of this relationship will allow directing investment flows to stimulate economic development and increase the level of the country's national competitiveness. The ways of finding solutions that contribute to improving the quality of education and contributing to greater coverage of the population with higher education are also being updated.

The relevance and scientific novelty of the study lies in the applied scientific approach to studying the relationship between the country's competitiveness index and the level of education development, as well as in finding ways to stimulate this factor.

The structural transformation of society, changes in the paradigm of innovative development, the growing influence of the new technological order have led to the need to modernize education. The development of higher education is aimed at identifying ways to adapt it to the requirements of the labor market and create a qualitatively new higher school that can take its rightful place in a market economy and satisfy the needs of each individual in obtaining knowledge and social experience. The problem of ensuring the quality of higher education services is one of the most complex and important social problems of higher education on a global scale. The quality of educational activity is characterized by various components: the state standard of higher education and the quality of its implementation; the quality of the teaching staff of the university; the quality of the material and technical base of the higher educational institution; the quality of methodological, library and information support of the educational process; the quality of the organization of the educational process in an educational institution, as well as the quality of the subjects of education. At the same time, the level of development of higher education directly affects the level of competitiveness of the country.

National competitiveness as a category includes many factors that determine it, among which the leading positions are occupied by education. In the course of the study, methodological approaches to determining national competitiveness were analyzed. The methodology for calculating the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF) includes the “Higher Education and Training” component, which reflects the coverage of secondary and higher education, as well as its costs and its quality. The analysis carried out in the course of the study showed a high correlation, and, consequently, the relationship between higher education and national competitiveness. Thus, higher education plays a significant role in economic development and in the formation of an integral indicator of national competitiveness.