INTERNAL CONTROL OF THE UNIVERSITY ACTIVITY: DEFINITION, NATURE, CONTENTS

The importance of the issue chosen for the current research directly refers to modern reformation process of the educational system of the Russian Federation. Internal control of the university activity is an important and necessary component of the integrated management system of the universities. Definition of its main elements is one of the most important and difficult tasks of the management and staff of higher educational institutions. Lots of variants of determination and interpretation of the concept “control” can be found in the works of Russian economists. By comparing and contrasting the view points of various authors the author suggests her definition of internal control of the university. The article clarifies the nature of the internal control of higher education institution activity, which is to provide supervision of the functioning objects of the control and inspection of the activities to comply with the objectives, standards and laws. Based on the model proposed by the COSO committee (The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations) five main elements of the internal control system of the university activity have been defined. The author emphasizes that if the system of the university internal control has been developed according to recommendations of COSO, it should go through external audit procedure to ensure its compliance with the Sarbanes – Oxley law (SOX). According to the results of the study it has been found that the construction of the internal control system in the higher school should be supplemented with the development of internal control standards, which will clearly specify the controlling bodies, control objectives, methods and forms of its realization. This should become a perspective for further research of the issues of forming the control system of the university activity.