Sociologist 4.0: Challenges and risks for the professional sociological education

Abstract

The Russian system of the professional sociological education, if we date its institutionalization to the creation of the first sociological faculties in the USSR in 1989, has functioned for more than thirty years. However, in the coming years, this education will have the most difficult period in its development due to the transition to a new two-level model of higher education and to the adoption of the Federal State Educational Standard of the 4th generation (FSES 4). The implementation of these plans creates certain challenges: 1) sociological training would lose the status of an independent enlarged group of specialties (EGS) and would be included into the political sciences EGS; 2) the suggested program of joint training of sociologists with representatives of political sciences in the first two years of study would reduce the study time for mastering sociological academic disciplines; 3) there are certain contradictions between the basic and specialized levels of higher education due to the suggested expanded opportunities for basic-level graduates to enroll in graduate school. Moreover, such issues as the target numbers for the EGS, mechanisms for their distribution between areas of training and possibility of simultaneous training in ‘related’ specialties have not been resolved. These challenges create risks for sociology of maintaining its status of a specialty, and, ultimately, a threat to its independence and identity. The author suggests some measures to develop the professional sociological education and to maintain its status under the current reform of the national higher education system, which is primarily the restoration of the sociological EGS in the List of Areas of Training in Higher Education, which would make the new FSES 4 focus on the related areas of training and improve the quality of sociological education.