Research and Education Entities in Ukraine: A Structural Analysis of International Ratings and Reporting Documents

Abstract

Quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the relations of research and education institutions (REI) in Ukraine with the real sector of economy are not regarded as a priority among the problems pertaining to the current performance and outlooks of the domestic science, technology and innovation system. This causes the importance of analysis of contributions made by domestic and foreign science and education entities in science, technology and innovation processes, formation of their links with other economic sectors, to highlight the indicators reflecting key problems faced by domestic research and education entities, which need to be accounted for in improvements of the research and education policy.

Because the emphasis is made on data of global ratings of research universities and annual financial reports of foreign and domestic REI, reflecting the links of ERI with industries, the source of information is methodologies for assessment and ranking of the largest research universities (“Academic Ranking of World Universities”, “QS World University Rankings”, and “Times Higher Education”), and annual research and financial reports of domestic and foreign universities.

The research methods included general methods of cognition, e. g. comparison, generalization, analysis and synthesis, with formalizing the research results to identify the most essential aspect of the problem.

It is shown that foreign research and education entities, whether private or public, have both research and education component that determines their competitiveness. An important measure for understanding the difference between foreign and domestic research universities is the impact of their activities in invention and innovation fields on the business sector performance. An analysis of financial reports of foreign and domestic universities with respect of ways and sources of their budget formation shows the diametrical difference, especially for external funds. Foreign public universities operated under the supervision of governments and financed by budget subsidies have research units and a wide-range thematic specialization, thus maintaining close links with the industry, which results in nearly half of the annual budget raised through the provision of services. Domestic research and education entities, in spite of declarations that they do host research components and innovation activities, have the related external income shares of several percent or less. In fact, the problem of dissociation from business is not considered by many domestic RIEs as a priority one. But it aggravates other problems, deprives RIEs of competitive advantages on the markets of education and science & technology services and makes implementation of integrative measures more complicated.