From Academic Assessment to KPIs: Implementing a Business-like Approach to Higher Education

The current paper sheds light on the results of the experiment starting the very early stage of a would-be multiphased study aimed at implementing business-like approaches into the system of higher education in Russia. Though the subject of research keeps up with the current trends, the study is seen as having a high degree of novelty thanks to the shift from business education to classical high school as long as broadening the scope from strategic planning of a University as a whole institution toward the exact areas of academic programme delivery, i.e curriculum and course design and students' assessment. The article focuses on the possible ways to increase and uphold the high level of graduates' employability by keeping up with the current trends of the labour market. Prototype workflow charts are offered to provide information on how the optional constituent of the curriculum should be extended to be continuously changed or reworked if applicable based on the changing current needs under the close supervision of the bodies formed by the alumni associations, employers and University members and students' assessment should run. The research is supposed to involve the few areas of managerial processes implemented into learning processes, while the current paper is focused on two of them: Curriculum redesign/course selection and students' assessment. The quantitative section of the article concentrates on the results of the survey conducted among students and teaching staff of four leading Universities in Moscow, which aimed to figure out how both sides would take the offered transformations. © 2021 ACM