CHALLENGES OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN RUSSIA IN LIGHT OF INTEGRATION AND CREATION OF A DOUBLE DIPLOMA MASTER PROGRAMME

One among many driving forces of progress in any field of the human activity and knowledge is synthesizing of the accumulated world experience. Taking into consideration an unending process of reformation of higher education, it is increasingly important to study and analyze all tendencies of development of today’s higher education. The process of reformation of any higher education system is complicated because a necessity arises to duly tackle a whole range of challenges. A rapid widening of a sphere of education and subsequent changes of its status are accompanied by growing problems which have led some researches to believe that there is a current crisis of education. A several causes of this crisis are emphasized such as inability of existing schools and universities to cope with a scale of a constantly growing need of education for population as well as visible insuffi ciency of resources and inertia of society. Tendencies of education systems in the world have left their mark on the Russian society as well. Many experts point out pressing challenges of the Russian higher education system that need attending to. But considering modern processes of the global integration, it can be said for sure that analysis of the Russian higher education system in a context of integration and creation of a double diploma master program may give us proper means to successfully tackle pressing issues of higher education of Russia. Based on the aforementioned, the following aims of this paper should be emphasized: - studying the modern Russian higher education system from a position of integration; - highlighting pressing issues of the higher education system of Russia as well as taking them into consideration in the process of creation and implementation of the joint international master programme