Public private partnership in higher education of Ukraine

The article explores the legal problems and the potential of developing public-private partnerships in higher education. Public-private partnerships are considered as a flexible and promising tool for attracting private investment in infrastructure, providing the necessary cooperation of research and education centers with companies of the real sector of economy, which contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of Ukraine for the period until 2030 in the field of education. Compared to simpler models of state-business cooperation, this tool involves the interaction of the scientific and educational potential of higher education institutions with investment, technological and industrial resources of the real sector of the economy. The state and educational institutions are in competition for higher education and funding recipients, needing infrastructure development. The advantages of public-private partnership models from the point of view of the private and public sector, the conditions for the development of this mechanism in the country are analyzed. It is concluded that public-private partnerships in higher education have prospects for development. There is an imbalance between the needs of economic and innovative development of Ukraine and the quality of legislation in the field of public-private partnership. Problems of legal regulation are considered, recommendations for improvement are given. It is indicated that public-private partnership is a developed form of investment projects for public (state and municipal) infrastructure and provides a high level of cooperation between the public and private sectors. Public-private partnership should be understood as a cooperation between public and private partners legally formalized for a certain period of time, based on the pooling of deposits and risk sharing in order to solve public problems, carried out through the implementation of investment projects in public interest. It is emphasized that in Ukraine the potential of public-private partnership is due primarily to the powers of the state in organizing the educational process, as a consequence, a significant predominance among the leading universities of state budget institutions, where property belongs to the state. This circumstance opens up significant opportunities for the use of concession and public-private partnership models of infrastructure development of higher education institutions.