Requirements and criteria for the identification of research universities status in Ukraine

The aim of the article. The aim of the article is to research the existing requirements of obtaining and confirming research university status and to suggest their specifying criteria.The results of the analysis. Given the need for the higher education strategy constant development and taking into account its substantial role in the innovative development where the intellectual resources manifested in knowledge, culture, and spirituality become a crucial factor of the social and economic process, its important to consider the field of higher education, which has traditionally educated national elite and is concluding for the various industries training. Reviewing the education system development it is necessary to pay attention to such form of higher education as a research university, the core function of which is scientific and research activity taking different forms in different knowledge areas within universities.Currently, the fourteen Ukrainian universities have the research university status. However, a promising integration form of education, science and industry faces several local barriers like university funding; a lecturers load structure and their material incentive; an information and communication technologies development, which substantially hinders the research university model implementation.It is an established fact that the main specific features of the research university are the following: 1)big numbers of students, receiving master's and PhD degrees; 2) deep involvement of the university departments and divisions to the research activity; 3)a high training level of graduates; 4)interconnection of education and research at all levels of the educational process; 5) an established relationships with external contractors, regional and local authorities, business; 6)university international research activity, its integration with the global scientific community; 7) a high level of academic influence of the university at the region and state level.The analysis determines that Ukraine has developed a number of criteria, which consists of 31indicators. These indicators allow to frame a research university. To the list of research university criteria, which gives it the status of the research university (and have to be confirmed every five years) we propose to add the following: an assessment of the education quality provided by the university; anemployment of graduates; the status of higher education institution by Ukrainian and global rankings (e.g., QS World University Rankings, Webometrics, Top-100, Top-200 Ukraine, Compass); thenumber of students involved in the scientific research; research of priority scientific, technical and innovative spheres; an income from intellectual property rights; an impact of innovative infrastructure (technology parks, science parks, students innovative business incubators).The conclusions and directions of further research. According to the identified and proposed criteria, the research university can be represented as a scientific and educational structure of vertically integrated teaching and research units and teaching, scientific, productive (innovative) departments. This structure is formed on the basis of a classic university gaining the new features, introducing something challenging and innovative, namely: multidisciplinary; engaging students in the scientific research on the systematic basis; practical and innovative research trend in accordance to the regional needs.The research universities development trends, their impact on the regional economies as well as the quality of the research university education services require further scientific study from the point of consideration education quality as a multidimensional concept, which covering such aspects of activities as: educational and academic programs, research work, academic stuff and students, educational and material resources and assets. There are still unresolved problems of research universities financing, alecturers load structure and their pay. The problem of information technology implementation in the practice of research universities requires further development, because the characteristics and principles of technologies using, education computerization and informatization trends, science-based requirements for the content and structure of such education are not clarified.