Present Day Higher School in Russia: Challenges and Contradictions

Abstract

In last decades higher school in Russia has undergone qualitative transformation, which deals not only with the higher school organization but also the deep foundation of this most essential social and cultural field of the ethnos being. Architecture of university education, criteria of assessing results of university work, models of education process are changing, i. e. all aspects of external attributes in the sphere of augmentation, retention and communication of accumulated knowledge to future generations. The essential foundations are changing, the power and depth of these transformations act as irreversible after-effects and refraction on the deep level of the higher education form and at the same time the society demand for the importance of higher education, individuals’ demand for applied conditions, which can provide their being in a formalized manner. Commercialization of higher school influences the form, depth and speed of transformations, stipulates demands for the functional component of education process designers, advances demands for economic efficiency and expediency of their professional work. The author shows that the key contradiction evident in the sphere of higher school of Russia, which gave birth to continuously existing problems makes professional community consider the nature of these phenomena and makes authorized representatives of power pay attention to inevitability of managerial paradigm modernization, to the necessity of introducing more tough, more formalized system of estimation criteria of efficiency of university functioning (the program of university development). But it would not prevent us from realizing the historical mission of higher school of Russia, this essence-value component of national culture and from understanding the necessity of public dialogue about the future of higher school. And finally, we must apprehend that academic education is not a service but one of the most important functions of state.

Keywords

• academic education
• higher school of russia
• systematic contradiction
• key contradiction
• local contradiction
• models of university management
• national security
• national elite
• phenomenology