Ranking of HEI is considered. International experience, scientific background for choosing indicators are taken into account. Some views on opportunities and risks of making decisions based on the popular international universities ranking are expressed.

The article gives an assessment of innovative development of Russia on the basis of studying of the«lost» international ratings. «The space of indicators», formed by partial indicators of innovative development used in the international ratings such as possibilities of the country to generate, use and extend knowledge, the potential of economy of knowledge, educational and personnel resources, etc. The similar space can define priorities for activity of the state institutions of development – economy, education, science, business. There is offered a model image of «the space of indicators» in the form of the petal chart, which integrates families of orgraphs – each orgraph represents a certain sphere of activity, partial indicators or estimates of activity are represented as top, or knots of the orgraph, and communication between as arches, or edges of the orgraph. All orgraphs meet into the uniform center where the integrated index of innovative development is maximum and equal 100%. This model received the name «convergent model of indicative planning» – CMIР; the modelallows to choose priorities for concentration and the most effective use of resources of higher education institution that is necessary for active participation of higher education institutions in innovative development of Russia.

In July 2013, fifteen Russian universities had won the competition for public support for entry into the world rankings. Every university in this group is well known in Russia and has a high reputation among Russian academic and business community. At the same time, these universities have different starting positions and unequal possibilities for successful competition in the global educational space. The paper examines the current state of Russian universities and identifies ways to improve thecompetitiveness of Russian universities in international rankings.

Statistics shows that there are both quantitative and qualitative changes in the area of general and vocational education. These changes have an impact on the future educational strategies andchoice. What are school graduates going to do? Where and why have they decided to continue education? What do they consider as the most important in life and what do they want to achieve? The paper presents the preliminary results of the study «New meanings in the educational strategies of youth» (2013), which is a part of the longitudinal study of the dynamics of educational trajectories of young people based on comparable research data among high school graduates of the Novosibirsk region from 1960s to 2010s.

The article presents an attempt of studying peculiarities of the learning process in Russian universities by using concept of student engagement and methodology of measuring it. The data was gathered in three Russian universities. The factor analysis was conducted in order to identify components of student engagement that can describe behavior of students and their attitudes to learning in each investigated university. Results from three Russian universities illustrate that student engagement has significant correlation with academic results and other student characteristics.

The system of legal education has been developing to a greater extent under requirements of the market, going out of professionals’ control. In the condition of uncontrolled growth the processes ofde ter ior ation of quality, under utilization of vocational education capacity and professional development take place. The study of this problem focuses on deformation of the careers of graduates with higher legal education, who have given up their specialty, and on the potential of this type of higher education to be the basis for transforming professional careers in other fields of activity. The research is based on the data of semi-structured interviews with graduates of law schools that do not work by a chosen profession. The circumstances of the choice of legal education and reasons of giving up the chosen profession are analyzed. It is also important to consider the resources of legal education for developing of professional careers in new areas.

The article of the SFEDU rector considers the main areas of university’s activities. Today SFEDU can be viewed as a core of innovation and education environment in the South of Russia. The article discusses some topical problems of a federal university, which are closely connected with the main trends of higher education development in Russia and abroad.

The article gives an assessment of the current state of engineering education development in the Southern Federal University (SFEDU) and considers its prospects. The authors discuss the foundation of the Engineering and Technological Academy that now includes all the relevant educational and research departments of SFEDU. The main purpose of the Engineering and Technological Academy is integration of education, science and production in a single educational research and innovative center, as well as the development of the system of engineers training to meet the new realities and challenges of technical progress.

The article focuses on the development of the conception of liberal education at the university inthe context of its innovation activity. The authors suggest a new didactic interpretation of two basic ideas of modernization – humanization and humanitarization of education. There are described the main lines of “humanitarian” transformation of the learning process, and the priority goals and tasks are marked out. The authors assert that the university should not only provide a student with the assets of knowledge but also give him an impetus for self-development and successful professional self-realization.

In connection with the inclusion of Pedagogical University into the structure of Southern Federal University, the question of development of the university pedagogical education model has arisen. Structural elements of this model are the following: educational and vocational subsystem, social and educational subsystem, research subsystem, teachers’ supplementary education and skills upgrading, management subsystem. In our opinion, this model should have its own mission – to ensure university to become a centre in research, professional education, culture, upbringing and innovation development in the region.

The paper discusses the design of the e-learning system used in the Southern Federal University andrelated features in the context of the education for skilled workers. This approach uses access to the scientific and technology laboratory equipment either for provisioning the individualized educational programs or to enable the students who are unable to attend a conventional laboratory for a variety of reasons (disability, part-time study, etc.) to conduct the experimental work. Our learning strategy is the reverse of that is used traditionally. We suggest to start with the introduction to the practical applications of science and technology relevant to the current job market, and study the general laws and theoretical principles afterwards, to deepen understanding and achieve the educational goals.

The article describes the main lines of pedagogical, research and creative work of SFEDU academy of architecture and arts. The basic principle of its activity is the development of individual creative faculties and formation of the abilities in conceptual comprehension and modeling of the environment in a context of regionalization and globalization of cultures. This principle reflects environmental approach to scientific research, which requires modeling of regional problems of architecture, design, and art in a context of global processes. The corner stone of the organization of the educational process is “learning through real designing and creative work”.

The article discusses the specificity of the learning process that is performed in an open e0 learning environment. An open virtual learning environment (VLE) is treated as an education systemof a special kind. Special attention is made on an open nature of VLE.

The article examines the model of the blended process of the formal and non-formal professional growth of higher education instructors and the organization of the network course of teacher’s training with the participation of content’s curator. The need of creating the mechanisms of acknowledgement (validation) and certification of the non-formally acquired competences of scientific-pedagogical personnel of higher education is shown.

The article substantiates the need of designing electronic learning tools in the context of modernization of continuing professional education. These tools should provide specific structure, content and focus of learning and cognitive activities of students. The article proposes tool support for didactic designing of electronic means of instruction.

The article is devoted to the development of e-learning resource for a discipline «Material science» in order to visualize complex latent processes in the metals during the heat treatment. In the article the technologies of the development of software environment are described. Using concrete examples it was shown how the application of multimedia learning tools in the educational process increases the efficiency of the teaching during lectures, practical training and facilitates assimilation of the material by students during their self-dependent work.

The article describes the theoretical and methodological approaches to assessment of quality training at education cluster. The authors present the experience in designing and implementing an integrated model of quality assessment in engineering education cluster. Education ideology and entrepreneurial ideology are integrated in the model by means of the competency approach to training and assessment.

The article discusses the features of Master degree in engineering and technology, developed in the Russian model of Magistracy, and its differences from the Western model. There are analyzed the factors, which determine this diversity. The article also proposes measures, which permit to make an approach for master’s degree training closer to a traditional model.

The article focuses on the peculiarities of pedagogical text analysis as a research procedure that should be accomplished by a researcher0beginner. Special attention is paid to a content-analysis of a pedagogical text, which includes conceptual orientation, application area, terminology and logic correctness of an author’s theses and conclusions.

Technification of educational process is a stable development trend for institutions of higher education. Exemplified by the course “General chemical engineering”, implementation of modular and context educational technology is shown. The course is included into the chemical process engineering curriculum. Modular and context technologies ensure development of engineering thinking of a future professional.

The problem of professional competency assessment of the academic teaching staff is very important for all the higher educational institutions of the global educational system. There are special research centers for developing methodological recommendations and best practices with abroad list of criteria being a contributory factor for unbiased assessment of lecturer’s scientific, innovative and teaching potential in the USA and European Union countries. As for the Russian Federation, it should be noted that in terms of higher education institutions we rarely use assessment criteria to estimate the competency and expertise of academic teaching staff. Therefore it’s necessary to adopt the leading countries’ experience and implement it in the Russian higher educational institutions in order to estimate the effectiveness of lecturers’ teaching activities and foster his professional and career promotion.

The history of the origin and formation of professional commercial education in Siberia isconsidered while taking into account the impact of the capitalist development needs at the beginning of the XXth century. A number of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of professional commercial education in the Siberian region are suggested, with the focus on the regional specificity of its content. Introduction into the scientific use of published and unpublished (archival) sources could verify the existing positions (provisions) in the research literature on the progressiveness of the special commercial education.

This article analyzes the system of teacher training that functioned on the territory of modern Nizhny Novgorod region during the period of 1950–60s. The problem of teacher’s training is discussedin this paper in three main aspects: secondary professional education and higher education, retraining and skills development, political education. There are analyzed the questions concerning structural subordination and relationships with the institutions that were not included in the system of teachers’ training, but were relevant to its functioning.

The article is targeted at the difficulties arising in English-language class while working with the TV news content in live broadcast. The article describes some necessary competences and skills, which students should have at various stages for an effective perception of the TV news and other programs transmitted life. Gradual methodology is offered as to acquiring skills by the students regarding comprehension of the above TV programs.

The article demonstrates the propriety of applying the logical and competency approach instudying sports disciplines by example of the course «Biomechanics of the locomotor activity». The interrelation between cultural and professional competences and the basic information through a modular system, step0by0step algorithm of skills is shown.