Investment in Higher Education and Analysis of Its Efficiency in Russia and Foreign Countries

<p style="text-align: justify;">Investment in human capital is considered as principal sources of economic development. For this reason, analysis related to investment in higher education and return on it is an important field of theoretical and empirical research. In spite of numerous studies devoted to this issue indeterminacy of the exact amount of rewards for more education by labour market and their evolution in time mean that this issue deserves further examination. Unlike other works discussing just one side of the issue, in this research different aspects of the problem of investment in higher education are presented. SWOT analysis makes it possible to make a conclusion about the current state of the Russian educational system and determine key priorities in higher education. A time-series analysis of the government investment in the higher education in Russia during the period from 2004 to 2013 reveals the tendencies in government investment and permits to carry out the forecast of amount of financing for the nearest years. In this research international comparisons of private and public investment are presented. In the work social and economic benefits from higher education are examined. To estimate the financial return on higher education the empirical analysis is carried out using the data from Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS). The regression model is based on Mincer equation and is estimated by ordinary least squares technique (OLS). Econometric study confirms the increase of wage with higher levels of education. The returns on higher education are presented for Russia as a whole and across the regions.The earnings of Individuals with higher education are more than 42,5% the earnings of individuals without it. The research reveals considerable regional differences: a fork of 36,2% - 53,9% has been estimated.</p>