INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY – KEY TO IMPROVE COMPETITIVENESS OF UNIVERSITIES

Dyukov Igor' Ivanovich, Director of diploma projects, Stockholm Shool of Economics (1-3 A Malaya Konyushennaya street, Saint-Petersburg, Russia), alvz@yandex.ru
Zyuban Alevtina Vasil'evna, Candidate of economic sciences, associate professor, laboratory of information technologies in system analysis and modeling, Saint-Petersburg Institute of Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (39 Line 14, Saint-Petersburg, Russia), alvz@yandex.ru

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Background. The quality of education throughout the world is seen as an important component of the country's competitiveness in the global market and the formation of the international labor market. The purpose of this article is to analyze the data on Russia concerning the world competitiveness ranking by the indicators that reflect the quality of education.
Materials and methods. The authors present the values of competitiveness ratings of some countries, including Russia, the value of the indicator "Education System Quality" in 2012, data on the indicator "Level of professional retraining of staff" and "Quality of business schools." The researchers analyzed the forms of public support of innovation at various levels - by federal authorities and by municipal government. More ample examination was carried out concerning the measures of support and development of innovations implemented in St. Petersburg in the framework of the comprehensive program "Science. Industry. Innovation" for the years 2012–2015. The measures included various competitions for the best innovative designs of projects in the field of scientific and technological activities, competitions to support congress activities, leading scientific schools and others. Among the considered topics were also the forms of participation of universities in the international projects that influence competitiveness of universities.
Conclusions. It was noted that it is necessary to continue further improvement of the measures of support of university activity to improve the quality of training of specialists, increase university competitiveness and rating in the world market of educational services.

quality of education, university competitiveness, educational services, innovative activity. 

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