At present time, many of the Russian foremost higher educational institutions acquire some typical features of the third generation universities [1]. Their indispensable adaptation to the new conditions gives rise to some significant transformations of own structure. The need to develop forestall education for promoters of fast emerging multidisciplinary technologies leads to melting and separating the university divisions and also to establishing interdepartmental teams. The universities serve as centers of network interaction with partners and business enterprises. Intensive interpenetration of project and administrative management forms becomes typical. Arising therefore painful changes in the roles of particular teams and their key members are to be alleviated due to proper management style. The influence of such collectively adopted documents as the university Mission and Strategy increases significantly. The paper dwells on the specific characteristics of arising management problems closely connected with the development ofmultidisciplinary forestall education in the area of biomedicine and biotechnologies at the Nizhni Novgorod Lobachevsky State University. The author stresses that at the contemporary stage the university acquires the features of an open system (in Prigogine's interpretation).

The article focuses on the main principles, forms and approaches to education quality evaluation in the process of establishing and developing the system of state accreditation of educational institutions and study programmes in Russian higher education. In the author's opinion, the transformation process of accreditation forms during the last 20 years was conditioned by the changes in the state education policy. Based on the analysis of the practice of establishing the state and independent systems of quality assurance, their specific features and diversity of forms, the article discusses the opportunities and prospects of further development of the quality assurance system.

The main problems considered are the difficulties of interlinking Federal State Educational Standard with professional standards and compliance with the principle of regionalization in the development of independently established educational standards in linguistics. A brief analysis of the university's consultations with employers in the field of translation activities is given, which is aimed at formulating professional competencies if professional standard is not available. The complexities of the competence approach implementation in terms of the competence assessment are discussed, as well as the problems of student-centered learning within the framework of Bologna process and the organization of individual educational routes. The paper gives examples of methodological work with regulatory documents, illustrates innovative aspects in the practice of a modern university, in particular, the use of mobile modules, project training and MOOC courses as additional learning resources.

The author regards the following text not as an article, but as reflections caused by A.A. Polonnikov's article "Modern educational situation: approaches to the description and discursive responsibility." It raises issues that are extremely important for the development of pedagogy, encourages critical analysis of a system of pedagogical language. But what is the most important - that it speaks to those who are closely involved in educational science and puts a question of discursive responsibility. Disregard of this question becomes a hindrance in the development of pedagogical knowledge, in understanding of the educational situation, in finding an answer to the question: who I am as an author of a pedagogical text.

The main issue discussed in the paper concerns the conditions and effects of reification (objectification) of the humanities realities produced by a scholarly-pedagogical text. A physicalist scholarly orientation towards realization o fthe "truth regime" is being considered as one ofthe main reifying conditions. Dereification is related to the "semiological turn" of the scholarly-pedagogical statement determined by self-referentiality of the scholarly-pedagogical language and communicative objectivization of its rhetorical forms. Another condition for dereification is a change of the scientificity image that educational sciences are oriented at.

The paper is constructed as a polemical reflection, as a response to A.A. Polonnikov's article about the complex relationships between the language system ofpedagogical sciences and its reflection in the image of pedagogical reality.

The article addresses the problem of the change of conceptual grounds of teaching the educational course of philosophy. The thematic waymarks we offer have been developed as a part of the Government Contract Project for the layout of the according conception of the course and the indicative working program of the discipline for undergraduate students of non-philosophical humanitarian specialties.

The changes in the system of Russian education set new requirements for the graduates of a pedagogical university, focused on the development of student’s personality, self-sufficiency in making responsible decisions. The solution of this problem is associated with the formation of didactic competence as an important component of teacher’s professional competence. In accordance with these provisions, it becomes necessary to elaborate a model for the effective formation of teacher training students’ didactic competence in the process of self-dependent work. The authors describe the components of this model which integrates target, methodological, content, procedural, and diagnostic units.

This paper has been written within the framework of a discussion regarding the status of engineering pedagogy, as well as its definition and typology. While solving the problem of the unity and polarity of roles played by a faculty member at an engineering university, such as teacher, researcher, or resource specialist, some questions arise, such as: how can all these teacher's functions be balanced? How can we ensure the efficiency of teaching activity without loss of its integrity? Contemplation will inevitably lead to the problem of teacher's pedagogical mastery and the necessity of searching for the ways to improve and develop it. The paper discusses the essence and structure of pedagogical mastery and the ways to form and improve it. This question is very important for engineering university teaching staff, which, as a rule, have no basic psychological and pedagogical education. The author dwells on the advanced training program developed at the Chair of Engineering pedagogy of Kazan National Research Technical University. The program consists of several modules aimed at the improving engineering teacher's pedagogical mastery.

The proposed three-paper series is the authors' attempt to address at least tangentially the whole diversity of quality assurance practices in higher education, the way this diversity has been dynamically manifested and comprehended at the eleven European Quality Assurance Forums (2006-2016). Of course, the authors' intention is to reflect this collective conceptual and methodological activity in the context of the Bologna Process, which obviously has already gone through an optimistic round of its first decade and entered into a contradictory, multi-speed and multilevel reality of transition to the institutional level of reforms.

The first article deals with some issues of the current stage of Bolognatransformations amid financial, economic and demographic crisis. The authors briefly touch upon a great potential of Russian higher education, which in late 20 century - early 21^st century they described as "Russian pre-Bologna".

The President of Russia Vladimir Putin suggested to launch a large-scale system program aimed at the development of the economy of a new technological generation, the so-called digital economy. The program implementation is impossible without the engineering personnel of high qualification, which is able to create the technologies of the world level in the shortest possible time. When improving the domestic system of training personnel of higher qualification it may be useful to analyze an experience ofprofessional doctorate training in the UK and other Anglo-Saxon countries of the world where professional doctoral programs focus rather on industry or business than on academic sphere.

The article analyzes the world experience in implementation the programs of professional doctorate training and gives suggestions for using this experience in Russia by integrating the similar programs into the current system of scientific-pedagogical personnel training in postgraduate study.

The paper is a response to the article "Candidate Engineering - Academic Degree Required Now". The author focuses on the urgency of interaction between universities and enterprises in training highly qualified engineering personnel. The paper discusses the possible forms of such cooperation, the principles of organization of applied, industry-oriented targeted postgraduate programs.

Intra-scientific and sociocultural factors that act today in the world and inRussiarequire to increase the methodological potential of postgraduate students. To solve this problem the authors propose to focus the attention of a student on the problem of correct expression of new knowledge received by himself. The authors have tested this pedagogical strategy on teaching postgraduate students to formulate defended statements in a thesis. The authors define a certain minimum of concepts and suggest to apply their approach to creativity process. The paper gives the educational topics examples with appropriate bibliography. The student (master's degree and postgraduate) who has already learned this training material is able to qualify his activity (including in the context of the "life cycle" of the scientific or engineering area) and the type of relationship with the research supervisor more objectively. This will also permits him to assess his own potential leadership position in the creative team more realistically.

The article presents an analysis of changes in the basic orientations of the education system in the information age, in the context of dialogue of cultures and transdisciplinarity of scientific research. In these conditions education should be a continuous process, a way of life (activity) of each person, his self-education, self-creation. Therefore, the most important task of school is the development of students' ability to learn and form their need for self-education. To solve this problem it is necessary to create an innovative school, creative (dialogical) pedagogy, and a complex multifunctional educational environment. As one of the tools of creative pedagogy a pilot innovation project of a social science textbook for secondary school was offered at the School of Public Administration Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The article introduces the up-to-date research in academic mobility and the prospects for its development. Much attention is given to the factors of influence and contemporary trends in international education. Based on the above data there are made predictions for transformation of world academic mobility for the coming decade. The article is relevant due to the approval in 2017 of a state priority project on developing Russian education export capability.

This article presents the results of a two-year study of massive open online courses (MOOC) «Modern Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development», which is effective since September 2015 on National Russian Platform «Open Education» in terms of learners' audience. A learner's profile is made on the basis of the conducted survey. According to the data collected, these are young women, who are interested in this subject and who are currently students or young specialists residing mainly in Moscow region. We found out that 9-11% of the learners, who were initially enrolled, have completed the course. These figures are similar to the ones collected by foreign researchers on the basis of analysis of MOOCs run in other countries. One of the reasons for subscribing to an online course given was the opportunity to enlarge knowledge. This fact would be meaningful for improving existing courses so that they not only provide new information but revise existing knowledge as well. The important factor that describes a rise in popularity of online course «Modern Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development» is the increase in the number of subscribers who live abroad in 2016.

The article focuses on using the results of national university rankings by Russian universities. The author identifies the practice of the ranking results transfer to potential stakeholders, the key groups of stakeholders for universities and the main tools of result transfer. The paper high-lights using of ranking results by the universities as data for analytics, benchmarking and indicative planning. The author dwells on some practices of using ranking results for development strategies elaboration and the positions responsible for working with the ratings. In conclusion several recommendations are given to expand the potential for working with university rankings.

In the framework of Tatarstan Gas and Petrochemical Forum (Kazan', September 7-8) a round table discussion "Gas and Petrochemical Industry Staffing: Issues of Engineering Pedagogy Development" was held. The participants were the leading researchers and experts in engineering education, as well as the representatives of business and oil and gas industry fromRussia,USA,Portugaland other countries. The reporters have outlined the main challenges for engineering education in the modern conditions, the topical tasks for technical universities. The participants have drawn up a series of recommendations: 1) for an expert community, 2) for the Ministry of education and science of Russian Federation, 2) for scientific organizations, engineering companies, enterprises, and 4) for the leadership of oil and gas and technical universities.