In an era of significant transformations affecting all spheres of human life, there is a growing need to make changes to previously established models of economic behavior. Of particular relevance today is the need to rethink the most important mechanisms governing the functioning of the scientific and educational sector as a fundamental resource for the country’s development and the primary source for building society’s human, scientific, technical, and cultural potential. Our study focuses on institutions of higher education as the key strategically important components of the education subsector.
Today, the transformation of higher education institutions into market entities—often referred to as suppliers or providers of educational services—is becoming an objective reality. A distinctive feature of universities is that they enter two interconnected markets with the same product: the market for educational services and the labor market.
The market for educational services represents the interaction between the demand for educational services from individual economic actors—such as individuals, businesses, and the government—and the supply from various educational organizations.
The variety of definitions of educational services can be reduced to the sum of knowledge or the volume of information transmitted to an individual, or to the type and outcome of labor/activity aimed at obtaining an education, or to an economic category expressing “complex economic relations in the field of education,” and so on. The large number of definitions necessitates identifying the key characteristics of educational services. An analysis of these key characteristics has shown that educational services:
1) currently possess the properties of both public and private goods;
2) share characteristics common to all services: inseparability from the source, non-durability, and intangibility;
3) possess specific characteristics: consumer activity in the process of receiving them, state quality control, dependence on two interrelated markets—the market for educational services and the labor market—the presence of ancillary services that add value to the higher education institution, and the overlap of the life cycles of educational services, the provider, and the individual’s education.
Based on these characteristics, it can be concluded that an educational service is the process of developing the consumer’s competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities) as a participant in socio-economic relations with the aim of satisfying their needs. In line with this definition, it is appropriate to examine the dynamics of a specific educational service’s presence in the market.
The process begins with the emergence of consumers’ needs for certain types of competencies, their transformation into the primary objectives of future educational services, continues through a period of effective and competitive presence of educational services on the market, and ends with their withdrawal from the market or significant modernization.
Thus, the process of producing and delivering an educational service by a provider constitutes a system in which specific needs exist at the input stage; these needs are analyzed for compatibility with the provider’s capacity to satisfy them, thereby triggering the start of a new life cycle.
Conducting marketing research to identify needs for specific types of competencies, as well as carrying out fundamental and applied research aimed at analyzing ways to meet those needs, constitutes the initial stage of the life cycle. This stage also involves designing and developing the process of delivering educational services, including licensing and accreditation procedures, securing pedagogical and logistical resources, identifying primary and supplementary funding sources, forecasting potential benefits, and so on.
The pilot marketing stage of educational services involves refining the strategy for bringing a new service to market. Most often, this is where the commercial implementation of the results of the innovative educational service delivery process takes place. Pilot marketing allows for the identification of the actual and potential effectiveness of educational service delivery activities.