Abstract

The majority of respondents in fact doesn’t understand the concept of «economism», doesn’t consider the need for University to take part in the entrepreneurial activity and doesn’t recognize the need for the existence of the elements of the business structures in the higher education institutions. The University lost its primary purpose and becomes a huge supermarket, which offers various types of knowledge. Rational action is the desire to buy the most qualitative product – a diploma from a prestigious University, which can be successfully converted to the official and economic status. All this leads to the emergence of the Ukrainian form of commercialization, which differs from the Western one. Its significant difference lies in the bias, focus on profit, consumerism as a type of a consumer behavior. It has been mentioned in the article that in the educational system the principles of consumerism moved to the introduction of fees for various additional services. The study of economism and the commercialization in the Ukrainian educational system is characterized by a peculiar relevance as it raises the issue of the dynamics and development of the modernization and transformation of the modern higher education. Commercialization is caused by a number of obstacles. The prioritative and harmonious development of the education system can be done only by the expense of state budget financing. In such circumstances, the University becomes a business entity for the provision of educational services. The attention in the article has been drawn to the nature and characteristics of the commercialization and economism. It has been noted that the state education policy as an integral part of social policy is one of the tools of state influence on the formation of social structures and is aimed at solving problems of societal level. This makes sociological examination of transformation processes in education relevant and, in particular, the results of commercialization. The results of the research of the processes of economism and the commercialization in Ukrainian higher education have been given by the author in the form of standardized questionnaire survey of students of 6 state-owned universities and 4 universities of private ownership. The mechanisms of commercialization in the Ukrainian education is clear: disadvantaged social-economic situation of the country as a whole; low, sometimes a poor level of state support for he higher education; inadequate funding of universities and the choice of the irrational forms of management in the educational sector; lack of reform of the higher education’s system; the rapid development of private education and the emergence of privately owned universities; choice of their own ways of modernization of the education sector and lack of support for the European educational trends; the existence of a peculiar type of culture, mentality and consciousness of individuals that actually contributes to innovations’ deny.