Investigation of the processes of regional convergence and divergence in the development of the higher education system

Purpose of the study. The study of uneven regional development is necessary to describe the dynamics of changes in the conditions of economic activity in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, to compare them, and in particular to identify problems associated with inequality in providing the territories with infrastructure for training specialists with higher education. The system of higher education is considered in the article as one of the institutions, the state of which characterizes the socio-economic development of the region, provides human resources to the economy of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation.

The purpose of this study is to develop methodological approaches to the study of the processes of divergence / convergence of regions in the field of higher education.

Materials and methods. This paper provides a review of works devoted to research in the field of assessing the dynamics of differentiation of the subjects of the Russian Federation by various indicators. Methods of statistical data analysis were applied: variance, variation coefficients, Gini coefficients, Theil indices were calculated for statistical data on the number of university students in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in different time periods. Graphs reflecting the dynamics of changes in the Gini coefficient, Theil index were built. Microsoft Excel was used to process statistical indicators.

Results. This article describes methodological approaches to the analysis of statistical data characterizing trends in the development of the higher education system in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and presents the results of a study of changes that have occurred in the period from 1995 to 2019 in the Russian Federation in the spatial concentration of the number of university students. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the developed methodological approaches to the study of the processes of divergence / convergence of regions and obtaining new data on the inequality of the spatial concentration of higher education in the Russian Federation. As a result of the statistical analysis, we obtained data on the presence of three periods with different dynamics of changes in the number of university students in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation: from 1995 to 2005, the inequality between the regions in this indicator decreased; from 2006  to 2012 - stabilized, slightly changing; from 2013 to 2019, there has been an increase in regional inequality in terms of the indicator under study.It was revealed that the predominance of the processes of divergence or convergence of regions according to the parameter «the number of students of educational institutions of higher education per 10,000 population in the subject of the Russian Federation» is observed in the same periods. Analysis of interregional variance for this parameter in different time periods showed the dependence of the variance value on the average value of indicators of all regions.

Conclusion. The described methodological approaches to the study of the processes of divergence / convergence of regions in the field of higher education can be used to assess a large amount of statistical data, diagnose regional inequality in this area, and can be used as the basis for substantiating managerial decision-making at the level of public administration in education.

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