This article discusses:
1.The need for a new vision of universities’ mission related to the implementation of integrating opportunities in terms of social fragmentation and differentiation of society. According to R. Barnett, the new mission of university is reduced to the implementation of its integrative capabilities: “However, to be a mediator in the modern society that loses its integrity can only be University the transforming”2.
2. A viewpoint according to which the key reforms of the educational sphere in Armenia is the transition from absorbent phase imported ideas and models to adapt phase of national relevance. According to the authors, the difficulties of this transition (due to the lack of institutional and social adaptation), explain the fact that the acquisition of a number of new knowledge, skills, experience and values are not widely spread.
3. The fact of society’s'arrival' into education. Today, the universities should, and partly forced to maintain permanent relations and explain to agents, external to the traditional environment, the essence of the changes and “such need for transparency and accountability, the need of reflection of it’s own purposes and ways of their achievement, creating new situation in the development of universities”3 .
4. European modernization program encourages universities to formulate various tasks and develop new ways of their solution and implementation into life. Innovation and entrepreneurship must be integrated to support education and research as the basis for further activity. Thus, in the center of attention is the problem of transformation of the universities, their role in formation of innovation and knowledge economy.
5. One of the important characteristics of the national educational systems is to face the challenges of the global world. In specifying these challenges, we have a pressure on higher education with the purpose of increasing of its quality and competitiveness. At the same time one of the criteria of competitiveness of national education systems is their willingness and ability in integration processes, i.e. creation of new features.
6. The transformation processes of modern education systems face a number of contradictions that largely slow down their effective development. Particularly these include:
ü The lack of understanding of the modern universities’ concept, the need to overcome ingrained mental models of the content and nature of higher education.
ü The problems in financing of higher education institutions activities, the conflict between traditional and modern models of financing higher education.
ü The necessity of developing a conceptual model and a common vision of the future development of the University system.
The formation of systematic approaches to the management of the universities, along with the processes of autonomization and increasing of financial and administrative independence.
7. The system way of thinking should become an important component of modern education reforming, and emphasis should be placed on changing the system as a whole, determine the highest goals for improvement and provide feedback of the results to objectives. In this case a radical revision of the objectives of each subject of the learning process is needed. These goals are to be delivered by each of the participants themselves and not be set from the outside.
The research is carried out with the financial support of Committee of Science of Ministry of Education RA in the framework of the research project № SCS 13-6C456.
Barnett R. Realizing the university in an age of supercomplexity. Buckingham Open Kniv Press, 2000. P.27.
3. Forrat N.V. Issue of quality in higher education: global challenges and their Russian transformation // Issues of education, 2009,N2,pagination 126.