Foreign experience of ''Initiatives of University Excellence’ (IDEX) implementation for increasing the competitiveness of universities

Abstract

The article analyzes and evaluates the tools for increasing the competitiveness of European universities on the basis of the ‘Initiatives of University Excellence (IDEX)' strategies implemented in the course of higher education and science reforms. At the same time, the main question of the research - why, in some countries, the reforms that began in the early 2000s, have been successful and continue to develop successfully, while in others their performance is significantly lower - presents both theoretical and practical interest. Why do some countries, assessing the medium-term and long-term prospects for reforms, continue their policy of increasing the competitiveness of science and university education, promote new ‘excellence initiatives', improving tools, tightening demands and assessing the efficiency of the results achieved, and other countries, with significant resources and efforts, have much more modest results? Our joint research is devoted to these questions and it's related to the evaluation of the efficiency of both the reforms altogether and of each of their tools individually.