Model of sociology training introduced by the fourthgeneration Federal State Educational Standard

Abstract

Today a new level-system of higher education is formed in Russia through significant changes that meet the new requirements for specialists in economics, social sectors, and all spheres of public life. The new system is to incorporate the developments of the Soviet educational model and the experience of recent decades. The article considers a new model of sociological training implied in the reform of the higher education system and in the fourthgeneration Federal State Educational Standard (FSES). One of the central ideas of the new system is to provide students with the opportunity to choose a field of study not upon entering a university, but at the third year of study, which would increase the awareness of professional choice, help graduates to more successfully integrate into the labor market due to a broader educational base and ensure the flexibility of educational programs, preserving the “fundamental core” in each. Thus, the first two years are for general (for the enlarged group of areas) training, and then specialized (sociological) training starts. However, the draft of the new standard proposed by the Ministry of Education and Science, which is based on updated, enlarged groups of areas, would not improve the professional training of sociologists. The mandatory general part for all areas in the group would inevitably reduce the professional part of training, thus, depriving the higher sociological education of connections with practice and destroying the focused training of specialists, which contradicts the demands of society and the labor market, and the goals of the country’s social-economic development. There are also other problems: an unpredictable extension of the time to enter the labor market; not identified mechanisms for distributing student quotas between areas within the group, for funding an extended period of study (20 %-40 % increase in cost) and an increased teaching load. The current pilot project designed for three years would not allow to make valid conclusions about the suggested changes as students will not even complete the basic level of higher education. Therefore, it is necessary to return to the FSES for each area of training, to further develop regulatory and legal grounds for the transition from the Bologna system with a focus on the values and goals of the Russian higher education, and to ensure a broad public-p rofessional discussion about the planned reforms.