GLOBAL TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION AT AL-FARABI KAZAKH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Modern higher education is of the main state priorities in many countries. Human factor, which determines the prospects for the development of society as a whole and globalization in general, plays the leading role. In today's world "life cycle" of knowledge is very short. Every ten years, the amount of human knowledge doubles. As a result, knowledge is the most valuable resource and is always in demand. Permanent acquisition of new information becomes paramount for the preservation of specific qualifications. In the scientific literature of the USA, for example, special unit for obsolescence of specific knowledge - so-called “half-life of competence”, i.e. the length of time after graduation, is featured when as a result of obsolescence of acquired knowledge due to appearance of new information professional competence is reduced by 50 percent. Thus, there is a need for continuous education as one of the core competencies. This will be possible if a university graduate is equipped by the general methodology of professional activity. In other words, he or she should be a specialist – methodologist, who can claim and use the "apparatus" of each individual discipline in interdisciplinary communication with other disciplines as means of issues solving during cognitive and professional activities. In Kazakhstan, one of the largest universities, which actively works towards the international and interdisciplinary cooperation and construction of both special and core competencies, namely creativity, innovative thinking, practical and social intelligence is al-Farabi Kazakh National University. The article will describe it in more details.