SYSTEMATIZATION OF EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ELEMENTS OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

The current scientific and methodological approaches to structuring the factors of the external environment of organizations, including higher education institutions, are examined in the given article. There have been created four specifications for each of the selected levels (micro-, macro-, meso- and mega-environment), utilizing the system-structural analysis and generalization of the approaches proposed in the scientific literature to the external environment elements system formation. All of them are designed for higher education institutions. Each of the specifications includes the maximum possible set of ordered elements, which at the microenvironment level are represented by entities combined into homogeneous groups, and at all other levels are represented by factors. Factors are distributed at each environment level between seven areas (regulatory, economic, demographic, scientific and technical, political, socio-cultural, and environmental). The need to separate normative-legal and demographic factors because they influence higher education institutions has been substantiated. The composition of scientific and technical factors is specified and their grouping is proposed.  The specifications are considered as reference, which, acting as a basic (benchmark) system for practical work to determine the basic elements from which each higher education institution can select the necessary elements according to their tasks and functional features. The elements of the external environment at any level can be detailed, integrated and regrouped. At all levels of the environment within each area, the factors are arranged according to a single principle, as a result of which all specifications in each area contain identical factors.