Transformation of the higher education system: current and emerging global trends

. In the context of unfolding global processes of the post-industrialization, informatization and the growth of knowledge components of economic development, the higher education system as an element of the economic and cultural compound of the countries and states acts as a moderating medium between all socio-economic subsystems of modern society. With the impact of global processes, the national higher education system assesses and neutralizes global risks, where it is possible, and creates sustainable trends of their effective adaptation. Regardless of the devotion level of the regional educational system and regardless of the priorities of the state educational system, it is impossible to exclude diffusion of the trends, tendencies and the global technologies. That is why, for the higher education systems of countries, the transformation of higher education systems in these conditions involves the adoption of a special model of such transformation – converged, which allows to identify the most dynamic, effective and relevant processes of change and to detect on this basis the main objectives of transformation and mechanisms for its implementation. With the expansion of information and technological processes in the society and in the aspect of the increasing restrictions of social mobility, the higher education takes on new meanings and new significance. In a globalized environment, the transformation of the autonomous higher education systems implicates the adoption of the specific model of transformation – the converged one. From these perspectives, the appreciation of the impact of global trends and tendencies to the transformation of stable patterns and links between the higher education economy seems to be a promising subject of research.


Introduction
Actually, the system of the higher education is under considerable impact of global processes and risks, which force it to assess and neutralize them, if it is possible.At the same time the higher education system is forming sustainable trends of effective adaptation to the dynamic processes of coordination, informatization, unification.
The subject area of this study is the higher education system in terms of converged transformational processes, which are unfolding, on the one hand, under the influence of global trends typical of the educational space as a whole (globalization and unification of higher education) , and on the other hand, are influenced by trends in the national interests of the States and their development priorities, based on their own traditions, culture and future development strategies [4; 21].Existing and emerging under the influence of new challenges (including pandemics and its characteristic limitations) in the globalization of education trends set the direction and speed of transformational processes in all countries and in all areas of activity [11; 23; 31].The increasing importance of these processes requires a rethinking of their role in the development of the economy and society, as well as of their incorporation into the system of organizational strategic decisions.
The problem of this study is determined by the growing dichotomy of globalization in the higher education.On the one hand, the process of globalization of education, which lasts for more than a quarter of a century, is a familiar and predictable phenomenon for all.The globalization of higher education is characterized by the interaction and unification of national-state systems of higher education; the creation of educational and research communities; the formation of a single educational space, which is reflected in the policy documents on the classification and standardization of education [37], in the documents of rapprochement of educational programs [20], in the common assessment scale, the similar skills levels to improve the mobility of professionals in the labour market [16].
On the other hand, today the process of forming a global digital space in higher education in terms of the new focus of its application deserves superior attention [3].Whereas it was previously assumed that the process of digitalizing learning was designed to increase the accessibility of education, to diversify learning patterns and to promote the traditional educational process for the students and the teachers, the current realities of the pandemic lead us to new, uncertainty projected risks.
Each transforming period of the development is marked by a stage of reconfiguration of the system into a new way of life and adaptation of the participants of the process to changes.The process of reformatting the whole system in terms of the requirements of the new world today should be interpreted as a period of converged transformation, because the digitalization of higher education is one of the traditional trends of the globalized space, but at the same time it can break the set globalization trends and tendencies in the educational system, if the process is not carefully predicted and coordinated.As noted in recent studies, the majority of higher education institutions are already ready to migrate to the online space [26], that may have the most unexpected consequences for the higher education system as a whole.

Materials and methods
The process of globalization of education has been analysed since the formation of this process.This study is based on empirical research by the leading scientists working on the transformation of higher education in the aspect of globalization, who have looked at this process over the entire thirty-year period of the development of these trends in education .The purpose of this study is: (I) to identify the dominant global trends and tendencies that determine the transformational vector of higher education; (II) to determine the basic socio-economic risks of transforming higher education in the context of national systems; (III) to detect the preferred transformational model for higher education.This research is focused on the methodology of comparative analysis and the grouping of data from open databases, including: The UNESCO Databases; The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; the information portals -Our World in Data; The Global Learning Landscape Holon IQ; statistical data from the Russian National Research University Higher School of Economics.

Results
The increasing importance of the challenges of globalization requires rethinking of their impact on the educational systems of states and needs their incorporating into the system of organizational strategic decision-making to carry out the converged transformation of higher education systems.The modern global economy makes the request for state educational systems and provokes as a consequence their unfolding transformation.
The network and technological modernization of the global economy have changed the essence of integration and regionalization.The openness and flexibility of network structures have significantly aligned the level of access of different countries to development sources.This made it much easier for convergence mechanisms to spray them with simultaneous replication.Convergence from the political process in the 20th century has turned into a socio-economic process in the 21 st century, naturally leading to the transformation of socioeconomic systems.Consequently, the converged transformation, more precisely transformation built on rapprochement, ensuring the preservation of own identity, is the most preferred model of evolution and development in the global economic space.This statement completely refers to the transformation of the higher education systems.Educational activity is "glonacal" activity, shaped simultaneously in global, national and local spheres [11].
Therefore, it is indeed important to understand the trends and tendencies that are typical of the global educational space in order to model and then politically and institutionally to shape an effective system of higher education as well as an organizational model of universities' development, corresponding to the goals and objectives of national development.
The empirical analysis revealed the main list of trends and tendencies emerging within the global socio-economic processes typical of higher education systems: 1) the prompt growth in the number of educated people by 2100 and the entry of developing and emerging markets into the status state-drivers of education; 2) the digitization of the learning process and the subsequent transition to "mobile learning" through the gamification of learning, the changing factors of supply and demand in the educational services market in the context of educational technology (EdTech) diversification (online-platforms, open online-courses, etc.), the use of block-chain technologies to evaluate and to verify learning results; 3) the formation of a national and global competency market due to the shift of criterion factors to the assessment of its qualifications in the direction of competences, skills and abilities to perform specific work functions, explained by the formation of a digital society; 4) the targeting of national educational markets on an international learning format and an international format of research cooperation through coalition forms of interaction.
1) The supply of educational services is formed on the basis of the consumer demand expectations.In this regard, the quantitative forecast of the total population motivated to improve the level of education is a priority for the higher education system, both in terms of national systems and in the global educational space.According to the estimations of The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) the number of illiterate population will decrease to 82.63 million people by 2100, that will be 0.92% of the estimated population, in comparison with 9,66% of world population in 2020 (Fig. 1); at the same time, it is projected that the number of people with secondary and post-secondary (higher) education will have increased 10-fold and will reach 7 billion people [32].Based on the quantitative indicators of the trend of population growth with higher education, it is possible to formulate and confirm with analytical data the new axis of educational mobility by 2050, which will shift to the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Fig. 2).Determination the volumes and directions of academic mobility flows suggests that designated countries gravitate towards the trend of prioritizing globalization.The analysis showed that students from West Asia and Oceania consume educational products and services from all regions of the global economy: from developed countries, and from developing, geographically close and geographically distant.This is an extremely important fact, as these countries will become the main consumers in the global market for educational services by 2050 [14].
2) The development of the digital economy and new technologies require the development of digital solutions.The formation of the digital culture among students and the consolidation of their knowledge, competencies and skills already during the implementation of educational program becomes significant.The loyalty to the digital technologies and the development of the ability to self-study and progress should be formed not only within the framework of theoretic-applied blocks, but also through the introduction of e-learning, remote educational technologies and online-courses in the educational process.Thus, education systems, which have previously acted as a buffering cluster between households and the labour market, as a result of the impact of global trends of unification and integration, take on a new modeling role: foresight potential is concentrated in educational systems, from which it is then transferred to related areas of the socio-economic system through an economic mechanism.From these perspective, the study of the current state of the educational technology industry has particular interest, because its vector of development is a collateral indicator of priorities for the development of the global education system.
The main example is the creation of the Global Learning Landscape presenting an open source of global education intelligence developed by HolonIQ team (2021 Global Learning Landscape).The essential goal of the Global Learning Landscape project is the prosses of integration and clusterisation of all kinds and all aspects information about the field of education, starting with clusters knowledge & content, education management, new delivery models and finishing by education application clusters like workforce & talent, skills & jobs.Today HolonIQ is the leading interactive international platform which, by generating analytical data, analyses 60,000 educational organizations around the world and provides constantly updated information about models and technologies in today's E-educational services market.
The analysis of the frequency of educational technologies presented in the global education landscape, showed that in higher education 41 EdTech groups from 55 existing groups of EdTech are applied, and 44 EdTech are involved in the formation of skills, that indicates a strong demand for these EdTech products in the domain of HE, among them: detection, gathering and assembling knowledge; education management platforms; einformation and educational environment; administering admissions; accreditation of educational institutions and programs, etc.The average level of prevalence has segment groups K12 and B2C, which have 38 and 35 EdTech groups.Minor are the EdTech groups of segment P2P, which are mainly used in segments B2C, B2B2C (10 EdTech groups) and are not represented at all in HE and skill-forming segments, such as: employers' participation in the formation of training plans, peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, interactive learning (infrastructure and algorithms), financial technologies, accelerators and incubators, online systems to support the fine tuning of human capital.
However, it is worth mention that it is in the group of less common technologies fundamentally new for the higher education system technologies.In our view, their low prevalence lies primarily in the infrastructure, technological and organizational and financial weaknesses of the higher education systems in developing and emerging markets.These technologies, even if they are point-action, are unlikely to have a significant positive effect, as they require a positive network effect.From this perspective, one of the most negative consequences of the "overtaking" model of educational systems development is their low integration into the global scientific and academic network, which significantly limits the capacity of regional educational systems not only to ensure their own competitiveness, but also in development as such.
3) The educational system is no longer the only provider of skills.Employment requires the acquisition of competencies that go beyond educational institutions.However, access to high-maintenance job continues to be mainly due to appropriate training.For the first time, the shift in requirements from skilled labour to a competent labour resource has helped to create a system for employee competence in the human resources market, which has been given the common name -Human Resources and today has its own service direction -HRmanagement.HR-management has been formed in the corporate companies, which were among the first to face the need to manage human capital, based on personalized corporate goals and objectives.
By and large, the actual competency market requires each employee be able to characterize their employment with missions and responsibilities taken on an individual basis and to evaluate their performance on the basis of performance indicators.Today, there are a number of lists in the world that define the range of competencies in the exercise of work: The OECD Global Competency (framework from 2016 which goes beyond the DeSeCo approach); The P21 framework (US framework -Partnership for 21 st century learning); The World Economic Forum framework (2015.);The Council of Europe Competences for Democratic Culture (2016.);The UNESCO Global Framework of Learning Domains (developed 2012/2013) [16].
Currently, within the scope of the project of the OECD "The Future of Education and Skills 2030" is presented the OECD "Learning Compass 2030", where special attention is paid to "Transformative Competencies for 2030" [30].The document states that in order to create innovative thinking, responsibility and knowledge among young people, it is necessary to focus on the formation of three additional competences, which have the meaning of "transformative" and can be used throughout the life, namely: creating new value, reconciling tensions and dilemmas, taking responsibility [30].
Based on the analysis of the lists of competencies presented, it is possible to distinguish the dominant trends that determine the vector of converged transformation of the higher education system in the context of the implementation of the requirements of the modern labor market:  the tendency to clarify competence as an element of educational standards and, at the same time, professional standards and to specify its role and its place in assessing the achievements of graduates;  the tendency of new labour requirements: besides the specialized competencies now it is necessary to develop flexible business communication skills (soft-skills), T-shaped skills, involving a combination of deep specialization in a particular field with interdisciplinary skills that could guarantee the group work in related professional fields.
4) The global paradox of modern scientific and educational systems is that world leaders in this field are simultaneously focused on cooperation and competition.The general tendency of the globalization of highly effective national higher education systems like in USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada led to the fact that they have acted for a long period as the "recipients-systems" for each other and as the "donor-systems" for many liberal countries.At the same time, such collaboration has increased competition in innovation and led to increased investment in R&D in general, from 722 million dollars USA in 2000 to 2,2 trillion dollars USA in 2017, which demonstrates the growing value of science-intensive research and the understanding that only R&D projects can provide answers to emerging challenges in healthcare, environment and safety [29].
Analysis of the publishing activity of leading scientific databases showed that more than 60% of publications are accounted for by the researches from United States and China, by a large margin are UK, Germany, Japan, India, Russia and South Korea (Fig. 3, 4).From this we can conclude, that today both the leading consumers and suppliers in the educational services market are the United States and China.China's significant breakthrough is due to a long-term national strategy for the development of higher education, which according to the projects 98/5 and 21/1, is focused on raising research and education standards to a world-wide level [19], significant increase in R&D spending over the past 20 years [21] and the general tendency of international cooperation in higher education between China and Europe [12], China and the United States [22].Today, the tendency of international scientific cooperation is losing the property of "universal" cooperation and becoming focused on cooperation with Chinese researchers, despite the political rhetoric in which China recognizes an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership [15].
These global trends and tendencies are becoming a challenge to the transformation of the higher and professional education systems within national economies around the world.This is due to the fact that in general the educational system is a buffer zone between households and the labour market, but it is in the higher education system that the highest potential is laid down in the possibility of modelling the vector and speed of development of socioeconomic systems.

Discussion
The analysis of tendencies that demonstrate challenges to national education systems also suggests the need to identify and substantiate global risks that can and are already affecting the development of the higher education systems in countries.It should be understood that risks determine the level of management of the higher education systems and form the priorities for their strategic development in the context of the challenges of globalization of education and the realization of the interests of states in the development of human potential.The level of risk, which is formed as a result of the influence of global trends and tendencies, allows not only to understand, but also to assess the consequences for their subsequent incorporation into the system of making organizational strategic decisions to neutralize or remove negative effects.
Thus, the empirical analysis revealed the major global risks of higher education systems in different countries: 1) Geopolitical risks associated with the uncertainty of political decisions as a result of inconsistency of views on the future of worlds' development and external force majeure shocks (COVID-19), reduce the effectiveness of international scientific and academic cooperation (29).A number of foreign researchers have identified the main barriers to international scientific and academic cooperation: [1] academic standards; [2] restrictions on the exchange of materials and data; [3] bureaucracy; [4] communication problems; [5] lack of institutional support; [6] lack of opportunities; [7] nationalism; [8] geographic problems; and [9] lack of time [21].
2) Global research and national systems of higher education have turned into a competitive market, which, in general, leads to a shortage of personnel in the scientific and academic community, as carriers of unique competencies.To attract researchers, national systems are looking for new ways of interaction, and not only scientific one.For example, the Department of Higher Education in France, due to the lack of special budget items, uses other attractors for international researchers, such as compliance with international standards for recruitment, procedures to improve the accommodation of researchers' families, assistance in integrating into the environment, assistance in administrative services [9].
3) The basis of the elite-foundations entities is being formed within the framework of educational systems.The demand and importance of elite institutions increases as technological advances increase the return from human capital [2].Higher education provides a context in which the brand image of the higher education institution potentially plays an important role in reducing the risks associated with the consumption of educational services, mainly because the assessment of the quality of education occurs after consumption [25].Furthermore, a number of other factors directly influence the assessment of the quality of education and, thus, the university brand perception.These factors entail the professional skills of the staff, location, territory and facilities, history, traditions and international agreements.Emphasis is placed on the fact that a brand management strategy is adopted by a number of universities for the sake of improving their ranking in the higher education market [5].Finally, the social image of the institution, as well as its overall market position, are important in assessing the impact on the institution's brand and thus model the selection process.
4) The rapid digitalization of educational content and educational technologies can lead to a sharp increase in the share of qualified personnel around the world, which will naturally lead not only to a decrease in the level of remuneration for each level of qualifications, but also to an increase in requirements for educational results and an increase in qualification requirements.On the other hand, digitalization processes will inevitably entail a change in the staffing of educational activities in general.The digitalization tendency is characterized by a reformation of the workforce.For the higher educational system, this is associated with the risk of reducing the teaching staff and expanding the IT sector personnel for servicing, storing and broadcasting content, a significant factor for the introduction of ICT.
5) In terms of developing the human capital of society, the investment in HE is not just a step towards increasing productivity and improving income distribution, but, very importantly, an action aimed at encouraging citizens to more intelligently define alternative lifestyles that they could have [10].Today, low paying capacity and (or) high debt load of students is the main problem of unequal access to education.Social inequality in higher education is associated both with the percentage of university graduates and with the relevance of institutional differentiation for the labor market [35].In recent years, it has been increasingly recognized in economics literature that attracting more young people to higher education is not enough and that support measures must also ensure that they eventually graduate [8].
So, a broad grading of current trends, tendencies and emerging risks that objectively exist in the global economy and that sometimes have an unpredictable impact on the development of the higher educational system of countries requires ordering, since global trends for educational systems exist objectively and belong to external factors of their transformation.Management of the development of HE is based on decision-making on the type of reaction to the environmental factor in the context of the priorities of countries and states.Considering that today, in the circumstance of the COVID-19 pandemic, national priorities have become dominant relative to the given trends of globalization, we can state that the well-known global transformation processes are slowing down.However, at the same time, a process of a new, rapid transformation is observed in the higher educational system, which is based on the principle of convergence.
The convergent transformation of higher education systems is characterized by a unique way of responding each individual national educational environment to known challenges, risks and threats.Today, the definition of significant priorities and prospects for the development of higher education systems is formed not from the position of improvement, but from the position of finding a way to preserve and adapt it.This is necessary because professional education systems, especially in terms of higher education, have a significant impact on the pace and results of development of the entire socio-economic system as a whole.In the current conditions of limited mobility of the population, regional scientific and educational alliances, as a special form of resource concentration, can again become a priority development model for national systems and, in the context of global trends, a new vector of the convergent transformation of higher education.

Conclusion
The domain of the HE, as a main core in the process of production and broadcast of knowledge, has acquired a special status of a regulator and moderator of the socio-economic processes of the macroeconomic system due to the fact that it is the sphere where the human capital is formed, and its value is determined by the self-capitalize ability.For a long time, the challenges of globalization set the direction and speed of transformational trends in all countries and in all spheres of activity.The growing importance of these challenges today requires a rethinking of their role in the development of the economy and society, their incorporation into the system of making organizational strategic decisions.
Based on the postulates of evolutionary theory, it can be assumed that the outcomes of transformation can result in at least two vectors: progress and regress.Regress is not a sustainable state and is contrary to the concept and goals of sustainable development of the United Nations.From the standpoint of the concept of sustainable development, the transformation of global subsystems based on the convergence of technologies, cultures, economic models is safer in comparison to the integration.The outcome of the integration for the participants in the integration process is predetermined by the input resource potential.The nature and outcome of integration changes in accordance with the type of technological order that dominates in a particular national-state system.
The experience of the 20 th century and the latest experience of the 21 st century confirm the objectively existing risks of erosion of national identity and national interests during the dominance of global integration processes if one of the participants in the integration process has absolute advantages in technologies and the level of development of production systems, and if the other one (others) significantly lags behind in a number of parameters.In this regard, convergent transformation is safer and more transparent because permits to adapt the development trajectories of participants to the global tendencies and trends, taking into account national interests.
The circumstances of the pandemic confirm that convergent transformation allows the higher education systems of countries to determine their own preferred attractors of development trajectories, taking into account the existing ones in the global economic space.With convergent transformation, there is no substitution, but the integration of the elements of the economic system, which avoids transformational shocks and ensures a smooth, though discrete, development path.In the long term, it is this form of transformation that will allow building the process of evolutionary changes based on the exchange of best practices and, at the same time, jointly overcoming the negative sides.The exchange of best practices is initiated from the technological aspects, since it is the technology that provides the very possibility of convergence of economic mechanisms.Therefore, it should be understood that the transformation process of a particular system is carried out not so much in a spontaneous form, but in accordance with the centralization of transformations.This feature of the implementation of this process in the educational system of society is determined by its historical role and concepts of state development.

E3SFig. 3 .
Fig. 3. Country shares in the world total of articles in scientific database Web of Science Source: 13.Author's content.

Fig. 4 .
Fig. 4. Country shares in the world total of articles in scientific database Scopus Source: 13.Author's content.