On the Social Effects of the Managerial Approach and Per-Capita Normative Financing of Higher Education

The article examines the use of per-capita normative financing as a type of managerial rating adopted in the system of inter-university competition and its impact on the situation in the Russian higher education system. The objective of the study is to identify the interconnection between the managerial content of per-capita normative financing, as the main instrument of state support for universities, and the destructive social effects of its application. The authors demonstrate that the theoretical foundations of this approach to education financing are based on the ideas of state managerialism, developed to adapt corporate management methods to the needs of the non-profit sector. The main objective of per-capita normative financing is to reduce state budget expenditures by depriving low-ranked universities of budgetary allocations by not allocating them admission quotas. The article provides a qualitative and quantitative measurement of the social effects of this managerial tool. Research methods: document analysis; mass survey of faculty; in-depth interviews with faculty working in pre-university training departments; in-depth interviews with faculty responsible for ensuring employment indicators. It was found that all indicators for standard per capita funding were divided into three categories: socially significant, achieved through imitation; useless, achieved through imitation; and those posing a real threat to the quality of education. Most KPIs are falsified to varying degrees because universities lack the resources to achieve them. The potential for distorted indicators stems from a profound disconnect between the essence of management work and scientific and educational activities. Management is a continuous process of adding up numbers and formalising processes. Science and education are the reproduction of a good, each unit of which requires individual assessment. In the managerialist management model, teachers find themselves completely dependent on a manager indifferent to the meaning of what they manage. Consciously or unconsciously, effective managers demand results at any cost, preferring to ignore the issue of the quality of the goods created. The main goal of normative per capita funding is to eliminate universities unable to meet the required minimum KPIs from the educational services market. Therefore, widespread fraud, amid resource constraints, resulted from adaptation to inherently discriminatory obligations. The authors conclude that regional universities lack the capacity to meet the Ministry of Education and Science's proposed KPIs for normative per capita funding, creating the risk of imitation and leading to a decline in the quality of the educational process, as well as a loss of universities' social value, that could pose serious risks to the country's development.