FACTORS RESTRAINING GROWTH OF THE QUALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION
In recent years, the system of higher education has undergone significant changes affecting the most important spheres of university activities: management of the educational process, its organization, which significantly changes the attitudes, incentives, motives and value system of the academic staff. In a number of cases, as a result of reforming the management system there are created special conditions that affect the quality of educational services. The task of investigating the consequences of the ongoing reforms is being actualized in order to identify the main factors that restrain the growth of quality. To solve this problem there has been made comparative analysis of the quality of higher education in Russia and abroad. Significant reserves of its growth in Russia have been revealed. There had been proposed a classification based on the scope of action: factors that operate within the educational system, but are external to the higher education; factors that are external to the educational system as a whole; factors acting within the system of higher education. The most significant external factor for the educational system is the low innovative potential of the economy, underestimation of the quality of education by business, which determines the aim of the majority of students not to build up human capital, but to obtain a diploma with minimal expenses. The factors intrinsic to the educational system, but external to the higher education system, include the lack of interest and unpreparedness of school teachers for working with gifted students, which is primarily due to the use of the results of the General State Examination and Unified State Examination for evaluating their work. The main negative factor operating within the higher education system is the distortion of teachers' incentives, the increase of their opportunistic behavior caused by the transition to a new management system for higher education organizations.