SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXTS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS IN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The author examines the structural changes in the higher education system, which are intensified by optimization processes and the search for an effective network, considering world experience and national specifics. This requires consideration of the internal and external logic of transformations of higher education institutions which does not happen automatically. The author explores the dominance of external logic in these transformations, which hides the danger of subordinating pedagogical rationality to economic and political rationality and warns against the commercialization of higher education, that hides the danger of its instrumentality, which is contrary to its civilizing purpose. The research shows that higher education institutions cannot be described and understood according to the model of traditional ontologies. The author draws attention to the normative approach to institutions of higher education in the situation of an uncertain future, which has a rather narrow range of validity due to the coexistence of ambivalent processes of expanding and densifying the educational space, as well as speeding up and slowing down time. The author researches the institutions of higher education of the late modern era, which, unlike the previous stages of their development, are no longer satisfied with their own internal cultural resources, but need for their full existence to be connected to wide networks of cultural and educational institutions, the presence of which strengthens the framework of the higher education system, and the absence of which indicates their weakness. It is emphasized that the structural changes taking place in modern higher educational institutions are accompanied by criticism both from the public and from within educational institutions. The author warns in this criticism a new understanding of the autonomy of educational institutions as a responsible and fair scientific community that generates the country’s intellectual potential is formed. Institutions of higher education, which have real and virtual opportunities for selfrepresentation in different spaces and different epistemological traditions, are offered to create and implement new educational programs considering socio-cultural contexts, which the author considers as the cultural and life-creating potential of the philosophy of continuous education of the individual.