The effectiveness of work and relationship of postgraduate students with their supervisors seem to be an urgent issue in the context of contemporary transformations of the Russian system of training highly qualified personnel. The article assesses the understanding of the purposes of graduate school by both “sides”, the specifics of the interaction between mentors and their mentees, the leading difficulties and ways to overcome them. Since in our country postgraduate programs are implemented not only at universities, we also compared situations at a university and in an academic community considering the case of the Ural Federal University (UrFU) and scientific institutes of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (UB RAS). Empirical methods for collecting initial data were applied both at UrFU and at UB RAS and included interviewing scientific leaders and questioning graduate students. A series of in-depth interviews with mentors led to the formulation of research hypotheses and allowed the elaboration of an online questionnaire for graduate students. As a result, we may state the prevalence of the “external” obstacles that reduce the effectiveness of the interaction of young scientists with their scientific leaders; in general, the relationship between them looks quite harmoniously. Among the most pressing problems we have identified (1) disorientation about the concept of postgraduate studies without obligatory defense of the thesis (especially at university); (2) low productivity of the “educational” postgraduate studies; (3) lack of advanced training for supervisors in the field of management in science; (4) high employment of professors; (5) side mentoring and (6) the lack of plans for writing a dissertation. The solution of this set of problems seems to be based, first of all, on a new regulatory framework at the federal level, revising the types and volumes of workload of graduate students and their supervisors, fixing the need to write a dissertation during the course of study, regulating the requirements for scientific supervisors and guaranteeing them advanced training in the field managerial competencies. The positive practice of employing all graduate students at academic institutions, at least for a fraction of the rate, may also help universities in increasing the motivation of graduate students to defend their PhD thesis and build their future career at the university.

Online courses are changing the landscape of higher education. However, their adoption by the teaching community of Russian universities has not yet been fully studied. The conducted sociological research made it possible to assess the involvement of Russian university lecturers in the processes of digitalization of education, to determine the motives for their activities in creating and integrating online courses into the educational process, and to form an understanding of the acceptance of online learning by the Russian teaching community. The pyramid of acceptance of Cox and Trotter’s open educational resources is a repulsive idea for the study. The empirical basis of the study was the responses and opinions of teachers of Russian universities, representing different categories of universities.

The results of the research can be of practical significance in determining the directions of social policy of education digitalization at the state level in terms of developing stimulating and motivating measures and measures to support and provide the necessary guarantees to lecturers, especially regional ones, during the transformation period.

The system of master education in Russia in now being transforming. It is influenced by the global trends in higher education and stakeholders’ needs. The goal of this research is to find out the substantial transformations in Russian magistracy and to underline the main trends at the current stage. To achieve the goal, the relevant literature and regulations were reviewed. Besides, we used the results of all-Russian survey “Russian Master’s Early Growth” devoted to Russian magistracy, the winner of the program “Scholarship program by Vladimir Potanin”.

The research gives the analyses of transformations of magistracy in Russia in three vectors: changes in educational paths, staffing and design of master programs. The results of the research can be used by university management while designing master’s programs.

The discussion of the new Curriculum for pedagogical training of teachers of technical disciplines, prior to its approval by the IGIP Executive Committee in the fall of 2019 is considered. The previous version of this Curriculum was approved in 2013. Over the past period, there have been significant changes in the use of ICT in training, discussed in the proposals of the National IGIP Offices, in the proceedings of the Annual IGIP Conferences, including the International Conference ICL-IGIP held in Tallinn on 23–25 September, 2020. At this Conference, IGIP President Hanno Hortsch in his presentation has published the IGIP curriculum in the form of a table (now we present it in translation into Russian) and reported about his vision of its use. The authors formulate their point of view on the topic basing on the overview of the presentations given at this Conference and relevant articles published in the latest issues of the journal “Higher education in Russia”.

The strategic objective of modern technological education is to prepare children for life in a high-tech competitive world. The implementation of this task encounters the problems of material and technical equipment of educational institutions and their staffing. An integrated approach based on the pooling of all resources and efforts of interested parties is needed to organize a technological education modern system. Training programs for teachers should take into account their interdisciplinary nature, and include the psychological, pedagogical, and natural-science components, so as technical aspects. The important segment of technology education is training of technical specialists without pedagogical background to work at schools and universities, as well as training of school teachers and university lectures based on the modern technological order. In this regard, a new look at the IGIP programs is possible, these program goals and objectives interpretation should be applied to the teacher training within the system of high-school technological education.

The article considers the approaches to solving the problems of high-school technological education system staffing, presents the comparative analysis of the current educational programs. The experience in training technical university teachers, masters of industrial instruction, technology teachers should be adjusted in accordance with the global changes in science, technique and technology.

The paper deals with the technology for the creation and use of an individual multimedia bilingual thesaurus as a tool for the integration of the foreign language and engineering disciplines at a technical university. The stages of designing and testing an individual thesaurus in vocational English language classes with students, majoring in automobile engineering, are described. Building on the achievements in thesaurus modelling in integrative foreign languages and professional disciplines teaching, the author presents her own technology for creating an individual English-Russian multimedia thesaurus, devoted to the automobile design, and the sequence of formation of speech skills in foreign language communication of engineers on its basis. The process of creating such thesaurus takes place at two levels of integration: intra-subject (interrelationship of all types of speech activity) and interdisciplinary (didactic synthesis of language and engineering disciplines). At the same time, the author outlines the areas of the near and further integration of the discipline «Professional English» and engineering disciplines, which is aimed at developing interdisciplinary thinking of engineering students. The author emphasizes the fact that successful teaching cross-cultural engineering communication requires outlining the content of learning situations, the modelling of which is the English language instructor’s responsibility. In order to organize this work, students are supposed to create a contextual part of the thesaurus from which the instructor singles out speech patterns. The selected speech patterns are mastered in a series of exercises and tasks prior to learning situations. The conclusion outlines ways of the further interdisciplinary integration by means of thesaurus modelling of professional subject areas.

 Without any allusion to the times when philosophy was an intellectual dominant of university education, there is no way to consider the present stage of philosophy in universities satisfying. It is supplanted to a distant periphery at a modern university and ends up in a deep shadow of science. As it is demonstrated in the article, such a situation results from misunder standing of the essence and perspective of philosophical knowledge, as well as from the dominant position of science in modern culture. Philosophy is a reflection and a “philosophizing”; as it was determined by M. Heidegger, it is an individual’s and cultural identity. As such, it appears as the main form of subject’s identification and adaptation to the changes taking place in the scientific knowledge and in the world in general.

This article discusses the topical issues of engineering education, which have become the discussion point at the international network scientific and practical conference titled “Synergy” that has been held since 2016. The organizational basis of the conference is provided by the leading technical universities in Russia under the support of the international societies for engineering education and the largest Russian energy company Gazprom. The article outlines the broad issues of the conference, related to interdisciplinarity, new standards and technologies for engineering education, digital educational environment and online technologies, interaction between engineering education and high-tech business and industry, the models of digital competencies and mechanisms to independently certify them, training of highly qualified personnel, professional education within the school-university-enterprise system, and many other relevant aspects of contemporary engineering education.

Any engineering activity is characterized by contradictions: social – between engineering problems and technical solutions and technological – between laws of nature and artificial engineering objects. This leads to the ethical dilemma of engineering work: when creating something new, social and environmental problems usually arise. This explains the “Janus-headedness” of the engineering profession: although the original intention is to do good, however, there are negative consequences that must be mitigated through new technical solutions that have the effect of creating improvements. “Leonardo’s oath” not only highlights this need, but also serves as a reference point for developing the engineering training programs which should be prepared specifically for this task. As a starting approach, the article suggests using the “sustainability triangle” – a model of social transformational effects in relation to the definition of the variables “social”, “economy” and “ecology” and their corresponding interdependence. It is shown that digitalization changes the “economy” setting in the sustainability triangle, which inevitably leads to consequences for the currently dependent variables “social “ and “ecology”. Digitalization requires, first, an economic approach, not environmental. It does not solve the fundamental problem: participation in the formation of a society to achieve socio-ecological balance is faced with the duality between the ethical necessity of forming and lack of real balance.

Facilitated by public administrations and the European Union, higher education institutions should support their teachers so they develop the skills for online and other forms of teaching and learning opened up by the digital era and should exploit the opportunities presented by technology to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The article focuses on new European Union grant programs that empower the increasing of digital literacy in the higher education area, developing cooperation, and overcoming challenges during the coronavirus pandemic. This initiative can empower a new European University and support an international project aimed at certification of professional educators with the participation of a Russian partner.

The work carried out within the framework of the German-Kazakh project “GeKaVoс – Transfer of dual training in logistics, mechatronics and sustainable energy supply to Kazakhstan” can be considered as one of the crucial aspects of the contribution to improving the quality of system of technical and vocational education (TVET), the achievement of high rates of employment of graduates of the TVET system, improve the ratio of supply and demand in the labor market.

As the analysis of the TVET system in Kazakhstan presented in the article shows, different forms of cooperation between participants of the educational process in the country (corporate partnership, industrial clusters, patronage of large and medium-sized enterprises over educational institutions, etc.) contribute to the development of a market-oriented education system. Monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of technical and vocational education, as well as identifying opportunities to improve its quality and scope require understanding of its nature, its functions, goals and key characteristics, the application of effective scientific tools to assess vocational technical education and training of trainers (tutors) (TVET).

The paper shows that the success of the transfer of educational programs depends primarily on the willingness to work together of all the stakeholders, the creation of systematic structures of interaction in the development of educational programs of different levels, improving methods of forecasting demand not only for certain professions, but also for professional and pre-professional competencies. The purpose of scientific evaluation of the dual system and workplace training is to prove its effectiveness as an educational strategy that provides students with real work experience, where they can apply social and technical skills and develop them.

Many educational institutions, assessing their prospects, plan to develop distance educational services using their own electronic and information educational environments (EIEE). During creating and operating EIEE of educational institution (EI), a number of questions arise related to structural, marketing, personnel and other decisions. The purpose of this article is to research the organizational, technical and didactic aspects of the EIEE EI. The methodology of the research is based on methods of system analysis, cybernetics, pedagogical psychology and didacticism.

A conceptual model of the EIEE EI as an organizational and technical system has been proposed. It includes a marketing subsystem, a set of technical tools, various types of security and an organizational subsystem. The main functions of these subsystems and their various components have been identified.

A didactic model of a typical complex of digital educational resources has been developed. Within this model, the diversity of digital educational resources across each academic discipline is integrated into complexes that provide a complete study at different target levels of assimilation, from initial acquaintance to solving uncharacteristic professionally oriented tasks.

From the point of view of pedagogical psychology and cybernetics, the high importance of feedback in EIEE EI is shown. The classification of feedbacks (internal and external) is proposed for the triad “Teacher – Teaching Program – Learner”. The limits of the use of automation in the formation of feedbacks are specified, as opposed to other (non-computer) responses to students’ educational activities. The role and place of feedback in the “digital footprints” of students and teachers is shown and the directions for the use of this data in artificial intelligence systems are outlined.

The digitalization of higher education is a long-term trend that gained a new impetus for further development because of the forced transition to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the article is to analyze the impact of digital transformation on the educational process in universities and to describe the risks through the students’ eyes. The analysis is based on the results of a survey conducted by the authors in 2020 among students of two universities - Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and the Institute of the Trade Union Movement of the General Confederation of Labor of Vietnam (IPLV).

The article describes the methodology of the online survey. The attitude towards distance learning is interpreted as a three-level attitude with emotional, cognitive and behavioral aspects. It is suggested that students’ readiness to switch to distance learning is determined by a set of macro and micro factors. Among the macro factors are the national specifics of the educational system, traditions in the field of higher education, infrastructure, the national educational policy, and the mobilization potential of the population. Among the micro factors are the cognitive and other psychological characteristics of the students, the socio-psychological openness to innovation.

According to the survey results, there is certain similarity in the way Russian and Vietnamese students assess their experience of distance learning. At the same time, significant differences in the perception of the outcome of the digital transformation of education have been revealed. For MGIMO students, major risks are associated with dehumanization, the severing of social ties, and the possible loss of student status. For Vietnamese students the most significant risks are mainly associated with the fears of the decreasing quality of education. It is therefore concluded that distance learning is both the field of opportunities and possible source of individual and institutional risks.