RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE QUALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND BALKAN COUNTRIES' COMPETITIVENESS.

The main purpose of the research is to determine the link between the quality of higher education and the competitiveness level of the Balkan countries. In addition, the goal is to identify critical factors in the field of higher education that require improvement. The methods used in the paper are comparative analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, cluster analysis and benchmarking analysis. The results of the research point to the fact that there is no high positive correlation between the quality of higher education and the competitiveness level of the Balkan countries. However, it is noticed that the Balkan countries record better results when it comes to higher education than the level of competitiveness. Apart from the necessity of improving certain domains of higher education, the priority of the education policy and development policy makers in the Balkan countries should be the utilization of the results achieved in education in the function of improving competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]