Assessing the impact of higher education competitiveness on the level of socio-economic development of a country

The study is devoted to the investigation of the educational determinants as components in shaping the level of socio-economic development of countries around the world, including assessment of the impact of national higher education system development indicators on the determinants of economic development, in particular macroeconomic, innovation, and technology determinants.Based on the grouping of 50 countries, a matrix of relationships between the Universitas 21 index and global competitiveness index was constructed. It is determined that despite the close correlation between the indices as a whole (0.96), there is a certain differentiation of influence in groups. The high impact of education on global competitiveness (0.76) was found in the group of countries with a medium level of competitiveness, moderate impact (0.54) – in the group of highly competitive countries, weak impact (0.38) – in the group of countries with a low level of competitiveness. Based on the correlation-regression analysis, the study proposes a structural-logical graph of the relationship between educational and economic indicators and quantifies it accordingly. The results show that the level of higher education competitiveness is closely correlated with such indicators as the level of global innovation development (0.8 over the period 2012-2020), the level of the knowledge intensity of GDP (0.73), and the level of socio-economic development (0.75). The results will allow changes in education indicators to be taken into account in the context of their impact on economic development and global development strategies.