Abstract:

The reform of higher education (HE) in Russia has been going on for the past 25 years. Its main feature is that it is carried out "from above", without the participation of the professional community, and without the support of the population. This is largely due to its failure and dissatisfaction with reforms in society. In the system of HE education there is a pathology of social relationships and interactions between educational communities of professors, students and managers. The academic community is alienated from the governance and resource distribution mechanisms. Studies, including ours, indicate the need to replace the existing linear model of high school by the nonlinear. But in such a large country as Russia, it cannot be done immediately and everywhere. Since the system of HE point of growth cannot be limited by the center of the country, the process should start in separate, the best prepared regions, including such large-scale territories as federal districts. Ural Federal District was selected for this study.

The purpose of this article is to reveal the structure and characteristics of the non-linear model of HE and its advantages over the linear model on the basis of analyzing university education practices in the region and expert opinions on them.

Our hypothesis is that in the course of the theoretical construction of nonlinear HE model Russia and its regions, it should be founded on such structural elements and features that will ensure the transformation of the system of HE into one of the drivers of economic, social and cultural development of society as a whole and its specific regions.

The main features of the nonlinear model of HE in the region are: changing nature of university management on the basis of the refusal of its authoritarian principles; wide involvement into the management system not only of managers, but also of representatives of scientific and educational community and students; transition of the region to a new type of relations between universities and the various social actors, acquiring the status of the social partners; university reliance on new use of a wide range of economic, social and spiritual resources; the full support of their own resources, primarily research and teaching and administrative staff; transformation of mass-educational processes towards their personalization and specifications; choice of individual educational trajectories by students in the course of their interaction with professors; convergence of educational communities and intensification of their interactions; constant search for new mechanisms of educational programs, relations with the external environment, management decisions.

The structure of the non-linear model of HE in the region includes:
1. principally new governance system – from the power structures at the regional level to concrete universities;
2. the relationship between educational communities of professors, students, managers, based on the principles of cooperation, participation of all communities in the management, the formation of the real motivation of the students in the education and science;
3. the connection between the individual educational trajectories of students and professional trajectories of the professors;
4. the internal academic mobility for the region;
5. the development of the network of interactions between universities in the region.

Keywords:

Non-linear model of higher education, features of the non-linear model of higher education, structure of the non-linear model of higher education.