Typology of Architectures of Flexible Higher Education Curriculum

The article describes the diversity of approaches to the structure of flexible curricula in the world universities. Based on the analysis of educational programs of 66 universities from 13 countries, the typology of flexible curriculum architectures centered on students’ choice opportunities is proposed for the first time. Data on the architecture of educational programs of universities were taken from open sources - university websites, scientific publications on the development of new curricula and published curricula. The proposed typology is built on two bases: program selection and courses selection. A comparative analysis of curricula with different types of architectures was conducted. It is concluded that leading world universities strive to provide the most flexible curricula. The developed typology can be used both for future research as a reference scale for comparison and by managers when developing new curricula.