FORMATION OF A NETWORK OF INTERACTION AMONG UNIVERSITIES IN THE NORTH-WESTERN MACRO-REGION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Abstract

The Strategic Academic Leadership Program ‘Priority 2030’ launched in 2021 has become the largest investmentprogram in the history of Russian higher school.  Its distinctive feature is the special attention to the development of network interaction among institutions of higher education by creating consortia. The main declared goal of their creation is realization of breakthrough projects ensuring the country’s scientific and technological development. In the North-Western macro-region, 14 higher education institutions of different specializations and departmental affiliation from 4 constituent entities of the Russian Federation participate in the program. Total state investment over 3 years has amounted to 10 billion rubles.The study attempts to describe the main distinctive characteristics of the network interaction system comprising institutionsof higher education located in the North-Western macro-region and operating within the framework of the consortia.Development programs of the institutions and annual reports about their realization were examined using the methods of content analysis.As a result, 397 connections of parent organizations and partner organizations were identified, types of connections amongthem (educational, scientific, industrial, and others) were proposed. It is shown that the maximum concentration of partners is observed in the ‘metropolitan regions’ of Moscow and St. Petersburg, a small concentration – in the Volga–Kama macro-region, andrather insignificant – in the rest. A noticeable role belongs to foreign organizations from countries taking unfriendly actions againstthe Russian Federation. Despite the stated ‘product nature’ of the implementation of the Program ‘Priority 2030’, most of the ties are not industrial but scientific and educational in nature. This, as well as the over-concentration of partnerships, may necessitate adjustments to the development programs. Based on the analysis (with the hierarchical agglomerative clustering method) of the geographical proximity of partners, their number, the types of connections developed, a typologization of existing university consortia is proposed. Five main and two additional types are defined.All the source data used for analysis is presented in the repository, which is an integral part of the publication.