Synthesis of traditions and innovations - universities’ response to the invasion of the future

The article considers the challenges of contemporary university education and the problems in training highly qualified specialists for all spheres of today’s society. The author mentions the high mission of universities as possessing the greatest potential to influence the future. In turn, economic and political institutions affect the demand for specialists, set priorities for state support and determine the situation on the labor market. The current system of higher education is a symbiosis of the Soviet and national models, taking into account state needs and cultural traditions, which makes it a powerful driver of social development. The main challenge of the post-Soviet higher education system is its abandonment of national traditions and the decades-tested experience of training specialists, combining traditions and innovations and focusing on the needs of the national economy, and also the uncritical transfer of foreign experience to the national education system without due examination and adaptation. Haste and uncritical thinking, the lack of a system, monetization, formalism and bureaucratization have seriously harmed the higher education system which lost its credibility in the public opinion, just as professors and university teachers. Much work remains to be done to implement the “roadmap” for the development of education as part of national culture, a center for the formation of the value matrix of the future, an institution that will best meet the social demands of the time, based on the efficient use of technologies and a combination of traditions and innovations

Bureaucracy · Credibility · Higher education · Politics · Social change · Social institution · Central Asia Education and Culture · Educational Innovations and Challenges · Foreign Language Teaching Methods