The Personnel of Russian Technological Sovereignty: Former Problems and Immediate Solutions

This research article is devoted to assessing the compliance of quantitative and structural indicators of the personnel higher education with the needs of the country’s economy. The authors try to determine the main directions for providing the economy with professional staff and the resulting tasks that universities face. The purpose of this article is to compare various indicators of the structure with higher-educated graduates’ number in Russia and in OECD countries (by areas of training), to find out the trends in this sphere, and to identify the reasons for the structural and quantitative discrepancy between the training of professional personnel in Russia and the need for them. There is studied the correspondence of the personnel training structure indicators in Russia by integrated groups of specialties to the predicted indicators of the sectoral structure of gross regional products and employment by types of economic activity. The article also analyzes the indicators of higher educated personnel training per ten thousand people and per GDP for Russia, Germany and the United States. Some results of additional analysis might be interpreted in different ways; the authors’ hypotheses make it possible to eliminate the possible contradictions obtained. An important result substantiated in the article is the medium-term shortage of personnel with higher education, as the number of professional personnel employed in the economy grows to compensate for the low level of labor productivity, the latter happening due to the scientifically and technologically lagging economy. Based on the results of the analysis, there are proposed higher-educated specialists’ shortage compensation mechanisms. This is wherefrom the urgent tasks of university management arise, their solution being of the utmost importance in the current work of university leaders at all levels. The article might be of interest for university leaders and employees, as well as for researchers specializing in the economics of higher education.