This article is about approaches and realization results of the self-setting educational standard with innovation orientation 210700 «Infocommunication technologies and networks» («master» degree) project designing. Structure of self-setting educational standard, requirements to the results and the conditions for realization of the basic professional educational programs with innovation oriented training are described. Self-setting educational standards ensure diversification of master programs with innovation orientation and systematic organization of learning process adjusted for regional business and industry.

The article is devoted to the analysis of development of education system in Russia for the last 25 years. The article adduces statistics of quantity dynamics of higher educational institutions and the number of the faculty and students. Assessment of the reforming processes of the education system in Russia is given. There are also viewed the key problems of the procedure of licensing and accreditation of a higher educational institution.Reasonable suggestions on reforming the system of managing Russian education and itsfinancing are provided in the conclusion. Some special recommendations apply to the financial management of higher educational institutions.

Globalization, commercialization and virtualization of higher education led to the transformation of traditional functions of universities and the emergence of new types of training providers. Traditional universities, on the one hand, keeping the historical features, objectives and functions actively use modern educational tools provided by scientific and technological revolution, on the other hand, some traditional universities are activelymodifying and integrating into a modern educational infrastructure. The role of new providersof higher education, both national and international, is constantly growing. There are new kinds of educational providers, more compliant the higher education market and opportunities of modern educational technologies. New providers can be conditionally divided into two large groups - the actual educational institutions and non-education providers to ensure these educational processes. Activities of new providers significantly changes the landscape ofhigher education market - an increasing number of market participants of educational services,that specialize in certain functions of the educational process, the merging of higher education providers and manufacturing companies.

The article outlines the new tendencies and prospects in engineering education and engineering pedagogy. The new trends and questions result in a need to evolve new educational practices, especially in engineering pedagogy in order to provide the most effective learning experiences for engineering students of the 21st century. A new look at the didactic and pedagogic concepts that presently form the basis of engineering education is required. IGIP has proposed a Prototype Curriculum for engineering pedagogy and has developed the accreditation criteria for engineering pedagogy programs

The article presents an analysis of the general approaches to designing structured programs for the training of PhD students adopted by the European Union countries in the framework of the third cycle of the Bologna process. It is shown that research schools are aneffective organizational form to implement structured programs. Research schools are specializeduniversity structures created for training of researches in a particular subject area. Such schools should ensure close links between young scientists and major competitive research teams. Usingas a case in point the «Neurobiotechnologies» research school at the Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod, we discuss a range of issues concerning the organization of postgraduate education, funding for dissertation research, networking and research staff mobility.

The article is devoted to conditions of the realization of the Presidential Program for training engineering staff for 2012-2014. The authors reveal the problems of implementing the additional educational programs for engineering personnel such as alienation from the real practice, interdisciplinary approach ignoring, neglect of students’ personal professional and social experience and others. So, this is the reason for development of innovative strategies for additional vocational training in conditions of public-private partnership and forconstructing a system of listeners’ scientific and methodological support. There is proposedthe theoretical substantiation of the model of interdisciplinary integrated training of engineering staff within the framework of the system of additional vocational education and skills upgrading.

The paper highlights the implementation of programme on National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University competitiveness enhancement in the group of top level world research and academic institutions and the promotion to TOP-100 of the world academic rankings. The strategic goal is TPU development as research university - one of the leaders in resource-efficient technologies, solving global problems of humanity on the way to sustainable development. Meeting a goal is planned through focusing the efforts on four basic development vectors: “Education”, “Research”, “Human Resources” and “Management”. The paper reveals the TPU undertakings for achievement of the assigned goals.

The paper is focused on competences development for managers and faculty staff of Russian universities providing engineering programmes consistent with the bestinternational experience in modernization of engineering education. The authors describe the structure, the content and implementation technology of the faculty training programme “Applying CDIO Concept in Engineering Education” designed by Tomsk Polytechnic University and Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. The paper considers the first programme results and discovers challenges of implementing CDIO Concept in Russian universities.

The paper explores emerging trends of modern society that have created tremendous impacts on higher education, both in worldwide and national scales. Implementing e-learning initiatives as the response of higher education institutions to major challenges isdiscussed. Educational process reforming through the use and development of e-learning technologies at the National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University is shown.

The criteria for professional accreditation of engineering programs of secondary and higher vocational education and also the pedagogical fundamentals of their development by the Association for Engineering Education of Russia (AEER) are given in the paper. The criteria are recommended to be applied in higher education institutions and colleges when designing new and updating existing educational programs as well as for the design of pedagogical learning environment necessary for program implementation and quality assurance.

The paper covers issues of ethical education for engineering students in Russian universities. The topical character of these issues is grounded by the findings of the survey of self-study reports on degree engineering programs, presented within professional accreditationrun by the Association for Engineering Education of Russia in 2003-2013, and reports of the program auditors. The proposed solution involves integration of an ethical aspect into professional disciplines assuming understanding of codes of engineering ethics by students and applying principles of the codes as one of the criteria for assessment of students’ projects. Authors outline the most effective methods of teaching engineering ethics and proposeindicators for relevant competency assessment.

Such important problem in the system of certification of highly qualified personnelas mandatory publication of dissertation in journals included in the «List of peer%reviewed scientific journals approved by Higher Attestation Commission (VAK RF) for publication of major scientific results of dissertations for the degree of doctor and candidate of sciences», has been presented and discussed in the article. It has been noted that, although such list isessentially necessary thing, its current version needs very substantial adjustment. A generalapproach of this adjustment includes radical rethinking of the current classifier of sciences and specialties and creation of two lists of «VAK journals», the first refers to the disciplines associated with the keyword «science», and the second - to areas of knowledge, such as Humanities, architecture, culturology and others.

The question about measures to counteract the borrowing vicarious material forscientific and educational work has not yet received proper discussion on the background of the problems associated with the unified state examination, the transition to two-tier system of higher education (bachelor - master) entering its final stage, and the reform of the Academies of Sciences (they caused a discussion in the scientific and teaching circles). The journalists, officials in the field of science and education and, finally, those who carry out suchan audit (advertising themselves) more vividly give their view on this topic. But there are somecontroversial points in this question, such as the difference in approaches to the scientific, educational and teaching and methodical materials; the existence of sufficient legal grounds; the optimality of the existing mechanism and others. Ignoring these issues will cause considerable damage to higher education and even greater losses to science.

The article focuses on the issues of development of Electronic Library Systems in conditions of changing the content circulation and content management. The growth of social metabolism activated by the development of the Global network causes the changes in the authorship relations so long as publication ceases to be a privileged occupation and becomes accessible, free and effective for everybody. So the designers of Electronic Library Systems in order toretain the users should provide them with the better search and selection technologies,semantic content analysis.

The article is devoted to the understanding and elaboration of the philosophyand methodology of humanities. Based on the philosophy of education, the author discloses some characteristics, which belong to the human intellectual processes and processes of transmission of knowledge in particular. The author proposes the concept of meaning as a person’s «functional organ», and considers its connection to the conception of the student% centered education.

The article discusses the causes of the unfavorable situation with recruitment and retaining young teachers in the system of higher education of Russia. The universities arenot able or do not consider it necessary to adequately meet the current needs of young teachers, and this leads to «aging» of all the teaching staff of higher school. The authors propose a set of measures on recruitment and retaining of young teachers in university taking into account the structure of their needs.

The problem of forming students’ attitude to learning and the teacher’s role in this process is considered in the article. It examines how pedagogical assessment influences on the formation of the positive motivation to learning and creation reflexive assessmentconditions. Recommendations on involvement students in the assessment activities aimed at the developing the self- and mutual assessment skills are given.

The article views the organizational and pedagogical characteristics of the Russianopen educational resources and massive open online courses. The author adduces the basic characteristics of xMOOC such as fair use, free will, multitude of students, using of diverse Internet services, accent on self-dependent work, self-control and mutual control. The Russian priority in this area is proved.

This paper presents the experience of applying e-Technology to monitor student’s academic performance and as a means to enhance student’s motivation. The advantages of using e-Learning and interactive methods are described. We used educational e-content options to make the results of students’ academic performance available on-line both for students and teachers. This opportunity was enthusiastically accepted by all participants of the educational process. Moreover, this approach was relevant to the level of students’ information culture. The majority of students continued to use the Internet for educational purposes more actively. Furthermore, some students developed their skills in using e-Learning technologies.

ICT and mobile technologies integration into teaching context is one of the pivotal trends of modernization of higher education system in Russian Federation. Nowadays language teachers need to be not only computer literate but also to have professional confidenceto use digital technologies and resources adequately and methodologically correctly. Thispaper focuses on the analysis of digital competence structure according to new educational standards designed by both Russian and foreign recognized bodies and specialists. The paper also reports on the research that was undertaken by the authors and based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from the Russian and Norwegian university teachers in 2012-2013. The objectives of the research are to analyze Russian and Norwegian teachers’ experience in mobile technologies integration, to define some perspectives of new technologies use aseducational tools for enhancing learners’ output and to determine what mobile applications are most appropriate to support learning context today.