Бастаджян К. А.
Руководитель Зимина С. В.
Бастаджян Карина Арменовна – студентка (бакалавр) 2-ого курса, Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова, факультет государственного управления, Москва, Россия.
E-mail: karina.bastadzhyan@mail.ru
Annotation. Nowadays education is recognized as a socially significant good that determines the development of society and has an impact on the country’s economic growth. Education is the basis of knowledge economy. The study reveals the need of formation of knowledge economy caused by active innovation development. The author defines crucial innovative requirements to develop Russian education. The paper considers the main constraining factors of the formation of knowledge economy and describes the prospects of development of knowledge economy in Russia.
Key words: role of education, knowledge, knowledge economy.
In the modern world, education plays an important role in the development of society and the country’s economic growth, since the guarantee of the state’s competitiveness in the world market is determined by the level of education, scientific and professional capability of the nation.
Since education is an integral part and a product of socialization, the phenomenon of education can be presented as a socially significant benefit that determines the development of society and has an impact on the country’s economic growth. The role of education in the life of society depends on the degree of significance of people’s knowledge in social development.
As at the present stage social and technical complications of the world around occur as a result of the processes of modernization and innovation, as well as competition in the labor market for jobs increases, the demand for knowledge is substantially increasing.
With the increase in demand for knowledge, the demand for education increases.
However, today we see that educational structures do not meet the needs of society. In this situation, education needs to be modernized. The modernization of education is a complex renewal of the mechanisms of the education system in accordance with the requirements of modern life.
When modernizing the education system, the key issues are the introduction of innovations in the education system, the formation of innovative mechanisms for the development of education and the management of innovative processes in the education system.
At the present stage, innovations should be the norm of the entire education system. Innovative education is based on new knowledge. So, the goal of educational innovations is to achieve new results overcoming the traditional education system.
Innovations in education should be directed to the formation of individuals who are determined to succeed in each industry, where they can realize themselves and show their capabilities. The introduction of education innovations occurs both in the organization of the educational process, and in the methods and programs. Innovative changes in the education system can be directed to the activities of teachers, the funding system, as well as to assess the quality of education.
At the present time, in connection with the active innovative development of the education system, there is an acute need for the formation of a knowledge economy in Russia.
So, at the present time Russia faces the problem of transition of the economy to a qualitatively new stage of development based on knowledge, innovations, in which the non-material sphere turns into the most important factor of the economy’s competitiveness. The country’s leadership set the task of radically changing the economic model of the development of the Russian Federation and the country’s transition from an export-raw material to an innovative economy based on the use of knowledge. Thus, the accelerated development of a knowledge-based economy in the Russian Federation is becoming one of the main conditions for the competitive, sustainable development of our country as a full-fledged subject of the world economy.
The knowledge economy is an economy in which economic growth and competitiveness are ensured by the creation, dissemination and use of knowledge. The knowledge economy is an economy in which knowledge enriches all sectors, and all participants in economic processes. It is an economy that uses knowledge not only in a variety of forms, but also creates it in the form of scientific and diverse high-tech products, innovations, highly qualified services, education and competencies.
The term “knowledge economy” as a term was introduced by the Austro-American economists, F. Machlup, and was described in his work “Production and distribution of knowledge in the USA” (1962).
The knowledge-based economy, as a new system for the development of society, includes the following components:[9]
1. Priority development of human capital and education. Employment in the knowledge economy is characterized by an increase in the value of skilled labor, and the political course of many countries is increasingly focused on the development of human capital.
2. Scientific activity, research and development work are the main activities focused on information production. The result of scientific activity is the acquisition of new knowledge that can be used for practical purposes or form the basis for subsequent fundamental and applied research.
3. Institutes of the knowledge economy. Institutions should be understood as “rules of the game” that determine the behavior of an individual. The knowledge economy presupposes the availability of both special legal institutions – rules for disclosure of information, protection of copyright, and state “development institutions”. The role of the latter is to “subsidize innovation, create infrastructure (office premises, centers for the collective use of complex equipment, Internet sites), as well as direct financing of innovative developments.”
Today, knowledge acquires the character of the commodity. However, they distinguish the properties of knowledge that distinguish them from the goods: non-competitiveness and exclusion.
Non-competitiveness is a characteristic of public goods, when the consumption of the good by one person does not interfere with the consumption of this good by other people. The incomprehensibility of the public good means that the producer does not have a real choice – to provide benefits only to those who pay for it, or to all comers.
These characteristics of knowledge give some grounds for relating knowledge to public goods. This, in turn, means that, from the point of view of society, it is optimal to minimize the marginal costs in the dissemination of knowledge.
The formation and development of the knowledge economy directly depends on the level of dynamism in the introduction of innovations in education, the purpose of which is to achieve new results. The term “knowledge economy” is sometimes equated with the innovation economy. Yet, it is important to understand that an innovative economy is a concept of a wider significance; The knowledge economy, in its turn, can be considered as the highest stage of development of the innovation economy.
Russia has significant opportunities for developing the knowledge economy, which are due to the high educational potential, significant opportunities of the innovation process and a sufficiently developed material and technical base. The brake on the country’s advance towards the knowledge economy remains the unresolved problems of the development of the institutional environment. The most significant institutional problems in the introduction of a knowledge-based economy model in modern Russian conditions include:[9]
1) in the field of creation of knowledge – the lag in the level of wages of workers in science and education from the average in the economy; Deformed motivation of the faculty (shortage of time for scientific research due to “overemployment” in combination); language barrier and underdevelopment of international research projects, etc.;
2) in the field of commercialization – a lack of infrastructure for venture financing and the transfer of innovation; Low level of legal literacy of researchers and inventors in the field of protection and transfer of intellectual property rights, underdeveloped competences in business planning, marketing and industrial design
3) in the field of implementation – the inertia of low demand for innovative developments from large business and the ineffectiveness of tax incentives; The uncertainty of the legal status of innovatively active enterprises and the incomplete nature of their support; Fierce competition in the markets for high-tech products and a lack of marketing support for high-tech businesses at the federal and regional levels.
The low level of economic and institutional regimes, including unfavorable conditions for the development of innovative business and ineffective methods of state regulation of innovation activity, should be singled out as the factor most negatively influencing the formation of the knowledge economy.
To solve the problem of Russia’s transition to the knowledge economy, it is necessary to solve the following problems:
– development of human potential of Russia, increase of competitiveness of human capital;
– creation of a highly competitive institutional environment that stimulates innovation activity;
– structural diversification of the economy on the basis of innovative technological development;
– transition to a new model of spatial development of the Russian economy.
Since the knowledge economy determines this type of economic development, where knowledge occupies a dominant role, and their production becomes a source of progress, the problem of developing innovation policy in the Russian Federation is becoming more urgent.
As the knowledge economy is formed, the education sector changes in the following directions: the value of the market for educational services in the economy increases; There is an increase in the costs of education; The volume and types of educational services provided are increasing; Competition between educational organizations is increasing. In addition, under the conditions of dynamically developing market conditions, there is a need to continuously obtain new knowledge, which entails the need to form a fundamentally different model for the organization of the educational sphere, in which the concept of continuing education will dominate.
Since the formation of the knowledge economy is greatly influenced by the level of development of education, a number of requirements are specifically defined for education, especially important for the development of personal education strategies:
– continuity (the evolution of the accumulated knowledge required in the implementation of innovation activities in the company);
– effectiveness (the possibility of creating an effective “system” to stimulate education, increasing the responsibility and interest of the trainee);
– practical orientation (stimulates the investment of firms in the education of their personnel).
In the knowledge economy, education becomes a tool that facilitates the production, expansion and use of knowledge. This establishes the position of education as an advanced branch of the knowledge economy, which makes it possible to determine the advantage of the education sector in the knowledge economy.
Since the mass education in the knowledge economy is considered to be a priority, which should not contradict the requirements listed above, it determines the tendencies of the development of the education system in the conditions of a knowledge-based economy:[9]
– forcing the individualization of higher education;
– the combination of corporate and industrial training with a fundamental education.
To develop the presented trends, it is necessary to create financial and institutional foundations for the formation of individual educational strategies on the basis of universities, as well as the development and implementation of various forms of interaction between the higher education system and enterprises that enable the introduction of corporate and industrial training experience in the educational process of higher education institutions at any stage of staff training.[5]
One can single out a number of positive factors in the formation of the knowledge economy in Russia:
– high level of information and telecommunication system;
– a high level of education of the population and the availability of capabilities for the implementation of innovative activities;
– a sufficiently high level of development of the national innovation system.
References
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