Factors influencing on extra budgetary income of leading Russian universities : econometric analysis

university economics; higher education management; university strategy; university competitiveness; entrepreneurial universities; extrabudgetary revenues; scientometrics This study is aimed to study the mechanisms that contribute to increasing the economic independence of universities, which in conditions of high dependence on-budget funding is exceptionally relevant in Russia. Even though the share of extra-budgetary revenues is growing at most Russian universities, this growth is heterogeneous and partly due to the “low base effect”.


Introduction
T he development of the higher education system in Russia is one of the priority areas of state policy, as evidenced by such initiatives as the creation and development of federal universities, research university programs (hereinafter NII), the program for increasing international competitiveness "5-100", universities as centres for the creation of innovations, programs of supporting universities. The targets for these programs contain both scientific and economic variables. Although the role of the latter is somewhat underestimated, it is proved that the achievement of scientific indicators ultimately has a positive effect on economic indicators [9].
There are quite a few works dealing with factors affecting individual sources of extra-budgetary income of a university, for example, the number of patents and startups. In particular, the influence of the average age of employees (inverse relationship), the size of the university, and the characteristics of the country or region where the university is located were proved [8]. In some works, a connection was noted between the university's business indicators and the quantity and quality of its publications. It was found that patent and publication activity, despite the rather popular opinion of poor compatibility with each other [13], is in fact, directly related [1,4,11].
The high patent activity of individual researchers is usually associated with the high quality of previous publications and a large number of subsequent publications [3]. At the same time, the most prominent scientists usually do not have high patent activity [7]. Also, a positive relationship was found between the university's publication activity and other indicators of entrepreneurial activity, such as the amount of R&D and the number of spin-offs [14]. All these results can be explained by the fact that the listed variables are united by one common characteristic, which can be called "research efforts and competencies" [2]. Also among the factors affecting the entrepreneurial activity of the university, the quality of education [10], the university's connection with the industry [5,12] and the employee compensation system [6,15] are noted.
At the same time, existing studies practically do not consider the economic independence of universities, especially relevant in Russia, given the significant state funding of universities.
Although government initiatives involve a large amount of budget funding, they also aim to increase the economic independence of universities, especially in the long run. This study is aimed at studying the factors affecting the share of extrabudgetary revenues of Russian universities. These factors must be taken into account when forming comprehensive university development plans.

Data and Methods
The study is based on the application of economic, structural and scientometric data on the 49 largest universities in Russia over four years (2015)(2016)(2017)(2018). It is noteworthy that most The primary research method is regression analysis using panel data models. Despite the potential promise of using lag variables, the effect of using many mechanisms may be delayed.
Therefore, in this study, lag variables are not considered because of the small number of years available for analysis.
The study originally planned to use the number of publications indexed in the Web of Science database (after this referred to as WoS) per 100 STS. However, a preliminary analysis of the data showed an extremely high (0.8) correlation with the citation rate of WoS publications per 100 STS, which makes it impossible to use of both indicators in the model simultaneously.
It was decided to include an indicator of the number of citations in the final model. However, the fact of such a close relationship between the number and quality of publications deserves special mention as evidence that the dilemma of choosing between the number and quality of publications is exaggerated, and these indicators usually have common dynamics.
The share of foreign STS is quite close to significance at the 10% level (p-value = 0.104).
Even though this result is not highly reliable, a negative relationship with the share of extrabudgetary revenues is curious. This circumstance is probably because foreign STSs are one of the factors for increasing budget financing (it is fair to say that they are also its consequence).
Finally, the ratio of STS average wages to region average wages is also directly related. If we do not consider the possible difficulties of cause-and-effect relationships, then we can assume that high wages attract qualified and motivated employees, more inclined to scientific work, R&D and patent activity.
At the same time, many variables are very far from statistical significance; these are the share of international students, the share of STS with a scientific degree, and the share of fulltime faculty members.

Conclusion
The study showed that all Russian universities are aimed at increasing the share of extra-budgetary revenues, and most of them successfully implement this goal. At the same time, the main successes of universities in improving this indicator in recent years are associated with the "low base effect", which may indicate that further growth will be more difficult. In this regard, the question arises of mechanisms that can directly or indirectly lead to an increase in the financial independence of universities.
This study is aimed not at studying the direct components of extrabudgetary income. The leading issue of this paper is studying the relationship between the main characteristics of the scientific and educational activities of the university and its share of extrabudgetary income. In our opinion, from a practical point of view, these relationships should be taken into account in the strategic and long-term planning of the development of the university. In our opinion, these findings can be used by the university regulator, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, in the preparation of tender documentation for the right to receive support for university development programs.
This analysis can be expanded by adding variables from sources other than Monitoring the effectiveness of universities. Presumably, the mechanisms that affect the amount of extrabudgetary revenues differ in different regions and different subject areas. Thus, a promising direction in the development of research is to take into account regional characteristics and various subject areas in which universities specialize.