Abstract:

The need for adequate provision of personnel requirements of the industry in the context of transition to Industry 4.0 actualizes the study of methodological and applied aspects of professional potential formation of future specialists of engineering and technical profile. The inclusion of technical universities in the international educational space necessarily requires the implementation of comparative research projects of tools for comparability of organizational models and educational practices of Russian and foreign universities in relation to those institutional innovations that are related to Industry 4.0.

The main task of the authors is to identify the features of the professional potential formation of future engineers in the context of the institutionalization of new formats of engineering education in two universities – the Ural Federal University (Russia, Yekaterinburg) and the University of Dunaujvaros (Hungary, Dunaujvaros). The empirical base of the study was the results of a survey (2019) of students in technical areas of training. The modeling of the professional potential structure of future engineers was carried out on the basis of the research strategy of complementarity methodologies of resource, process, institutional and community-based approaches.

A comparative objective analysis of the professional potential structure of students of two universities shows a significant lag in the reserve characteristics of the professional potential of Ural students studying in undergraduate program - a low educational start and demotivation of students' professional choice at the time of their admission to the university. In the process of training, the level of representations of UrFU bachelors about the profession grows by 2.5 times, in relation to the dynamics of professional representations of Hungarian students-by 10 times. The high and positive dynamics of professional socialization of students in UrFU is due to the resource characteristics of its educational environment, the quality of which is not inferior, and somewhere exceeds similar characteristics of the european University. The competitive advantages of the University of Dunaujvaros, according to students, are: wide opportunities to study according to individual curricula and the implementation of individual educational trajectories; active practice of international exchange academic mobility. It is these advantages that provide higher estimates of Hungarian students ' own employment opportunities not only in the national but also in the international labor market.

A comparative analysis of assessments of the preferred nature and conditions of future work had found different professional attitudes and trajectories of students of two universities. The vast majority of Ural students broadcast their hope for social, professional and corporate security. The analysis of professional alternatives revealed the lack of formation and instability of their value and professional orientations. Regional features of the labor market, specific mentality, low educational and professional start, heterogeneous in professional and value settings composition of students in UrFU generates a basic contradiction between resource and intentional models of professional potential.

Keywords:

Engineering education, professional potential, students, comparative analysis.