THE EFFECT OF GLOBALIZATION ON TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES IN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION: CONTRADICTIONS OF THE PROCESS

Abstract

The purpose of the article is an attempt to reveal the specifics of the functioning of the university in the context of globalization processes. The main focus of the paper is the analysis of the contradictory phenomena brought to the educational process by globalization. First of all, we make an attempt to outline the limits of the danger for the academic environment, which consists in the potential loss of the university’s status as a center: forming a tradition, preserving cultural values and broadcasting a high level of knowledge. The fact that globalization processes have not bypassed any of the spheres within which a person functions is indisputable. This is culture, economy, education, etc. But if at first, absorbing the field of education, globalization had a more spontaneous nature, now we can see how it is transferred to the category of strategy within the framework of education. Thus, such phenomena as “academic mobility”, “rating”, “quality assurance”, “standards”, “autonomy of the university” and many other things are formed and intensified in the educational process. Accordingly, these and other globalization markers are both positive and have their dark side. However, behind all this globalization mainstream in an effort to adapt to the rapidly changing world, university education is gradually losing its main functions and destroying its mission. Thus, being called to preserve tradition and honor knowledge, it increasingly gravitates towards innovativeness, sometimes unfounded and unverified. This, in turn, causes the leveling of scientific experience, which was formed, if not by centuries, then by decades of painstaking work of influential intellectuals. As for the latter, the function of the intellectual is also taking on a modified form, because it is gradually being replaced by the dubious figure of the “expert”. Thus, guided by the trajectory of philosophical discourse, we will try to consider a number of globalization changes that affect the educational space. And on the basis of this, make an unbiased assessment.