Digital transformation is considered as an inevitable process for higher education systems like all socio-economic institutions and systems. The digital transformation, which paradoxically incorporates both challenges and conveniences, has to become the focus of corporations’ strategies. The aim of this study is to determine the status of digital transformation in universities’ strategies. For this purpose, the strategic plans of 18 Turkish universities, which ranked at the top 1000 most often in the world rankings, were evaluated with the content analysis method. Findings indicate that expressions about the components of digital transformation in the strategic plans of the universities were gathered under 4 themes, 14 categories and 35 codes. The expressions of the universities about digital transformation are coded under the category of diversity and flexibility of learning technologies, especially education theme and distance/open learning. It is observed that universities have the least digital transformation strategies concerning research and social service missions. In this sense, it was concluded that universities could not perform digital transformation beyond technological infrastructure renewal into an integrated transformation model and strategic vision. The results of the study were compared with empirical and theoretical studies in the literature. For universities and future studies, it was proposed that Turkish universities are compareable with the universities abroad, which show the successful examples of the digital transformation, and that the quantitative and/or qualitative methods related to the subject can be applied by internal and external stakeholders, especially in the sector’s evaluations.

Nowadays a postgraduate school reform is expected. It aims at enhancing the scientific preparation of postgraduate students and increasing the number of dissertations. It is planned that the educational process will be carried out in accordance with federal state requirements, and a dissertation will be presented as the final qualification work. Also, the educational accreditation of doctoral programs is going to be cancel. The article discusses the question how far universities are ready for these innovations, and presents the results of a survey aimed at studying the attitude of postgraduate students and their supervisors to the educational process in postgraduate school. The empirical data obtained indicate that the existing model of scientific and pedagogical personnel training is more focused on the educational activities rather than research, there is a mismatch between content of training courses and cognitive needs of students, and there are no necessary material and technical conditions for conducting experimental work. The expected increase in hours for research activities can lead to a reduction in the disciplines that ensure the formation of pedagogical competencies in postgraduate students. The authors believe that pedagogical education for postgraduate students of industrial universities, including technical ones, is necessary, since teachers of special disciplines are not massively trained anywhere. The solution of the question of the optimal ratio of scientific and educational training is possible through the introduction of individual educational paths, which are built taking into account the orientation of postgraduate students towards teaching or research activities.

The authors consider the methodology basics of reviews as a prospective type of scholarly publications, their taxonomy and most popular review types (narrative reviews, bibliometric reviews, systematic reviews, reviews of reviews, scoping reviews, meta-analysis), as well as specific features of procedures and algorithms for conducting reviews. Top 100 of highly cited reviews on higher education from 2010 to 2019 published in high-ranking peer-reviewed journals and indexed in the international database Scopus is based on the traditional methodology that aims to sample the most essential and influential publications of the kind in a well-represented and unbiased way and to subject the sampled reviews to content, bibliometric, and linguistic analyses. based on the inclusion criteria, keywords and methods of objective selection and sampling of the publications to be reviewed and analyzed, the authors singled out the essential thematic clusters in Top-100 list (educational technologies, university, student, teaching, learning, assessment, etc.) and determined the key directions in the review field of study. Each cluster contains a brief description of the most important aspects and approaches to various topics related to higher education, an analysis of their novelty and existing gaps in the field. According to the rhetoric theory of scholarly text by John Swales named ‘Moves and steps’, the authors offer a uniform rhetoric schema of reviews, commenting on the text components and their contents. Such a schema may serve as a guideline for authors of reviews made up for international peer-reviewed journals. The most popular publications by citations and number of publications entail reviews devoted to the culture of higher education; educational technologies and peculiarities of their application in the new educational landscape; online education as a new dimension of education requiring a special ecosystem; academic ethics of university teachers; soft skills development necessary for successful professional development; academic and scientific libraries as new centers for scientific and academic communication.

The article discusses the problems of Russian postgraduate studies improving, the goals and objectives of postgraduate training. The peculiarities of reforming the national postgraduate school, general and specific principles and forms of its improvement are considered. The author dwells on a highly specialized orientation of postgraduate training’s educational component. The emphasis is on the need of its restructuring in order to deepen the training of postgraduate students in the beginnings of their researcher profession. The article makes the case for establishing variable postgraduate training, which means focusing of the structure and content of postgraduate training on different types of graduates’ professional employment. In order to improve the quality of scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel training, it is necessary to examine the possibilities of higher education resources to be integrated with the scientific potential of Russian Academy of Sciences research institutes. A brief description of the international experience in the field of scientists and teachers training is presented. A two-level model of postgraduate program is proposed. The postgraduate studies at the first level ensure obtaining the primary professional researcher qualification in industrial orientation, while at the second level, the task of transforming the graduate student into an independent active researcher is solved.

The article discusses the dynamics of the development of federal state educational standards (FSES) for the preparation of bachelors, masters and specialists in the field of photonics, instrumentation, optical and biotechnological systems and technologies over the past twenty-five years. The authors analyze the features, advantages and disadvantages of tiered and continuous higher education. Particular attention is paid to the development and improvement of state educational standards of higher education in the specialty “Electronic and Optical-electronic Devices and Special-purpose Systems.” The article substantiates the expansion of the scope of professional use of a specialist in the field of electronic and optoelectronic devices and systems and the need to introduce a new – information-analytical type of activity. based on the developed competency models of the results of mastering the educational programs of graduate, undergraduate and specialty studies, a comparative analysis of their orientation in various fields of activity is carried out. One of the main trends in the development of state regulation of training students in an enlarged group of specialties and areas of training “Photonics, Instrumentation, Optical and Biotechnical Systems and Technologies” is providing universities with greater freedom in the development of educational programs and the selection of applied educational technologies. It is shown that the main strategic task of the developer of the main professional educational program is to form a set of competencies that will allow the graduate to work in one of the areas of professional activity. At the same time, this set of competencies should be correlated with some labor functions formally described by professional standards and qualification requirements. It is concluded that the main result of the evolutionary development of educational programs of tiered and continuous higher education was the transition from their academic orientation to a practice-oriented character providing focus on certain professional qualifications and requirements of the employer.

Flipped learning is actually considered as one of the most discussed educational concepts. The Russian researchers mainly focus on the technology of the flipped learning method and analyze the recent practice of its application at all levels of national education system. The purpose of the present article is to explore the theoretical backgrounds of the flipped learning. based on groundwork literature on flipped learning and related concepts and using a descriptive method of study the paper explores the fundamental features of the flipped learning, outlines the main steps in the development of this educational technology and shows its evolution from the basic “flipped classroom” model to the modern “flipped learning” concept. Today we still can see a simplified understanding of the “flipped classroom” technology, which reduces it to a simple inversion of homework and classroom work. The paper shows that while using the inversion of homework and classroom work as the base principle, the flipped learning implies more conceptual changes in the learning process, namely, a radical rethinking of the role of the teacher, the student and the content of their face-to-face time. Flipped learning can be considered as a kind of educational meta-strategy that creates optimal conditions for the application of a personalized approach to learning, as well as of all the basic tactics of active learning. The relevance of the work is due to the need to adapt the learning process in higher education to the changes in the national education system, as well as to global socio-economic changes. The article contributes to the positive attitude to the current transformation process in national education, and provides Russian practitioners with a theoretical basis and explanation of some of the critical issues of flipped learning.

The article focuses on the analysis of models for efficiency evaluation of corporate training programs for managers based on the principle of cross-functionality taking into account the type of educational organization. According to the authors, the expected results of corporate re-training of managers on the basis of cross-functionality, first of all, is the formation of diverse, additional competences. The emergence of new types of employees with diverse competencies who follow certain rules of relations between employees contributes to the consistent increment of innovative knowledge among employees, which fully corresponds to the changing needs of production and the digital economy. The work was carried out on the basis of study of Russian and foreign scientific publications, practical experience of authors and the survey of developers of corporate training programs and specialists on the basis of the principle of cross-functionality. The 7 most commonly used assessment models have been identified. The results are of interest to corporate training and continuing education professionals during the planning and development phase of educational programs.

The article presents the results of a study of the language training of specialists in the field of Customs affairs in Russia and several of foreign countries. The described international experience in the language training of customs affairs specialists in Australia, vietnam, Germany, China, Moldova, the United States of America allows to indicate its specificity, namely, a bias towards the development of bilingual competence, since a multicultural customs space requires a specialist to have the ability to conduct a dialogue, to know the cultural realities of a native and foreign language, to be able to realize this knowledge in direct communication with international partners.

Russian experience of the language training of customs specialists is characterized, on the one hand, by the lack of regionalization and filling in the content of a foreign language on the basis of interdisciplinary integration with the content of the professional cycle disciplines, and on the other, by the widespread use of active teaching methods, information and communication technologies in teaching a foreign language, which positively affects the formation of readiness for professional intercultural communication.

The authors conclude that a deeper study of the international experience of language training on the basis of comparative analysis is necessary in order to improve Russian training of a qualified customs specialist who is able to conduct effective professional activities in a foreign language environment.

The article gives a comparative analysis of the factors promoting an increase of interest in learning Russian on the part of non-native speaking students. The research is based on the survey of 225 students carried out at MGIMO-University and Chisinau State Pedagogical University (Moldova). The authors revealed linguo-didactic and sociocultural factors defining students’ choice of language of communication at the university and promoting the building of cognitive interest to learning Russian and forming intercultural competence. The research has shown that 1) the foreign bachelor’s and master’s students have clear goals in learning Russian; 2) the majority of students express an apparent interest in learning Russian; 3) most of students are interested in receiving skills in professional communication in Russian. The professional training of specialists in international relations implies knowing of several languages, the ability to work in multicultural environment, the readiness to effective cross-cultural communication. The research showed that it is necessary to make adjustments in the educational environment and the content of educational programmes based on the labour market demands.

The article addresses the problems concerned with teaching minority languages in the regions of Russia and the Gagauz Autonomy in the Republic of Moldova. The authors analyze sociocultural factors exerting motivating and demotivating influence on the use of regional languages. The results of a survey conducted in Komrat State University have shown that the Gagauz language does not fully cater to the social, intellectual and personal needs of the younger generation. Along with that, the socio-cultural component of university curricula serves as a motivating factor, promotes interest in learning a minority language and contributes to building linguo-cultural and national identity.

Public funding currently plays a key role in the stability and success of higher education systems in the world leading countries. As governments are often the main sources of funding for higher education, the effectiveness of public policies in allocating financial flows is a matter of concern. This paper discusses the main mechanisms of financing higher education systems and analyzes the structures and features of these mechanisms using the examples of the largest countries of Western Europe and Asia – Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and China.

Materials and methods. In order to identify current trends in public funding of higher education, the authors used two main groups of materials, which can be conditionally divided into official regulatory documents and statistical (analytical) reviews. Systemic-structural and statistical data analysis methods were applied in the research.

Results. The study of trends in public funding of higher education revealed their great diversity not only in terms of the share in the overall structure of university income, but also in the mechanisms of distribution of financial flows. Nevertheless, this study presents the main groups of these mechanisms, structured according to the methods of their implementation.

Discussion and Conclusion. In the course of the study, the authors concluded that the existing diversity of the world’s higher education financing systems is primarily due to the sustainability of traditions that have developed in national education systems, and the lack of international initiatives aimed at unifying the mechanisms of education financing, as was done earlier on the structure, levels and qualifications in the implementation of the bologna Process. In addition, the constantly changing financial situation in the world encourages states to look for alternative sources of support for higher education, which leads to the creation of new independent financing mechanisms.

Researchers consider the discrepancy between university educational programs and engineering practice to be the common problem of higher technical education today. The changes taking place at higher technical school abroad demonstrate the search for solutions of engineering education problems in developed countries. Understanding current trends in the content of higher technical education curricula in those countries will help to identify the most effective ways to solve common problems of engineering education. The article presents the results of the analysis of innovative changes taking place in the higher technical education curricula content abroad nowadays. The research materials were articles in peer-reviewed journals included in the SCOPUS database published from 2009 to 2018, proceedings of conferences held by international engineering communities. The factual basis of the study was the curricula for training engineers at a number of foreign leading universities. As a result of the research, the following innovations in the content of higher technical education curricula were identified: 1) introduction of sustainable development principles into the engineering curricula; 2) the inclusion of modules on the basics of management, entrepreneurship and innovation into the curricula, the creation of interdisciplinary programs leading to double degrees in engineering and management; 3) cooperation of universities with partner enterprises in the development of curricula; 4) the internationalization of engineering curricula, the training of future engineers for global engineering activities. The CDIO approach is considered as an innovative basis for the design of educational programs for future engineers. Those changes in the engineering curricula are aimed at bridging the gap between the contents of engineering educational programs and industrial practice, the development of competencies necessary for successful professional engineering activities, and, as a result, they contribute to improving the quality of higher technical education.