The stage of active provision of educational services consists of three sub-stages:
- The adoption of this service is primarily linked to promotional campaigns aimed at raising maximum awareness of the new educational service. Sales volumes gradually begin to grow;
- The diffusion of educational services is linked to their spread, replication, and repeated use, thanks to a large number of consumers. Sales volumes grow, reaching their peak. The level of competition, as a rule, also increases;
- routinization is associated with the educational service acquiring characteristics such as stability, the stability of its functional elements, consistency, and, ultimately, the obsolescence of educational services. The market is oversaturated, and fierce competition is observed. To sustain falling demand, significant marketing expenditures and active advertising campaigns are required, or competitive advantages must be strengthened—for example, by improving the service.
The quality control phase for educational services is, so to speak, carried out in parallel with the active provision of educational services, during which the quality and relevance of the services provided are analyzed from the perspectives of the provider itself, consumers, and other stakeholders in the educational services market. The results of educational services obtained at the output may require modification and improvement of the service or the method of its delivery, discontinuation of its production, or, conversely, an increase in sales.
In concluding about the life cycle of an educational service, it can be said that:
- unlike the life cycle of a product, the life cycle of a service is longer, more flexible, and less risky, due to the close feedback between providers and consumers at every stage, as well as significant opportunities for improvement;
- the lifespan of educational programs delivered through services is shrinking, while an individual’s educational life cycle is lengthening, and demand for various educational services is trending upward;
- In recent decades, the interdependence among and the diversity of actors involved in the provision of educational services have increased, necessitating the development of a new system of organization and management in the field of educational services that is capable of adaptively responding to changes in the labor market. In addition, various economic actors now have the opportunity to focus on a specific stage of the educational services life cycle, become active participants, and “fully leverage the export potential of the global market for educational services.”
The highlighted characteristics of the educational service life cycle have become particularly relevant in light of the renewed process of globalization.
The challenges posed by the globalization of the world economy, Ukraine’s accession to the WTO, and its participation in the Bologna Process have been addressed in the works of a number of authors, allowing for the identification of several trends in the development of the educational services market:
- strengthening international academic mobility as a process aimed at building global intellectual capital;
- increasing the export of educational services;
- reforming higher education and improving the quality of educational services in line with the demands of the global market;
- striving to continuously seek ways to ensure the competitiveness of higher education institutions in domestic and global markets;
- strengthening vertical integration processes based on the principles of “school-university,” “school-vocational school-university,” and so on; striving to consolidate universities and strengthen horizontal integration;
- reforming the labor market to enhance structuring and differentiation, and, as a result, increasing the differentiation of educational services;
- combining competition among educational service providers—who shape the supply—with their cooperation to enhance the attractiveness of the sector;
- enhancing the investment attractiveness of education, as well as the openness and internationalization of knowledge potential, through the transition to the knowledge economy;
- strengthening the interdependence between universities and organizations—as the end consumers of educational services—in terms of shaping the content of educational programs and ensuring their resource support;
- increasing the share of fee-based educational services;
- limiting the regulatory role of the government, strengthening market-based mechanisms for managing universities, increasing their institutional autonomy, and so on.