Diversification of Higher Educational Institutions as a Factor of Sustainable Development of Education

Abstract

The article explores the processes of diversification of higher educational institutions in the context of the sustainable society, which poses specific requirements to the quality of training of new generations of professionals for economy, social sphere and culture. The authors believe that the co-evolution of higher education and the society of sustainable development may evolve along the line of horizontal diversification of higher educational institutions. In the framework of this type of diversification, many industry-specific institutions of higher education (academies, institutes, technological universities) launch educational programs beyond their specialized status and implement ICT education across all curricula. The authors emphasize that for higher education to be sustainable, besides being continuous, it needs to move in the direction of fundamentalization, universality, flexibility, informatization and increasing the role of the humanities. To be sustainable, higher education has to be innovative, based on a harmonious unity of teaching, research and industry-based training. Today, university curricula should be flexible and show a good balance between fundamental and applied disciplines, on the one hand, and so-called general disciplines, the humanities, social sciences and specialist, profession-specific disciplines on the other. The humanities must be granted a proper place in the content of university education, if we want universities to shape high cultural and moral values in their graduates.