ИСТИНА

Since 2011 Russian Universities (RU) were obliged to change their system of teaching and began to work according to the new universal standards and programs. The majority of RU had to implement the two-tier studies program. But realizing the obvious drawbacks of training bachelors, the main universities of the largest regions of Russia declared the coexistence of two education systems – the two-tier system (4+2 years) and the traditional system for training specialists (5 years). Besides, there appeared two variants of bachelor’s course – academic and application oriented. Moscow (MSU) and St-Petersburg State Universities were allowed to continue training specialists, however, it was decided that specialists of MSU would study for as long as 6 years. At the same time, MSU has the programs and licenses for master courses for those bachelors who have graduated from other Universities. All the programs of the main compulsory disciplines of all RU are the same, they contain the same tasks in terms of student’s knowledge, skills, and experience; the same competences. But every RU has a right to select its own option courses according to the main trends of analytical chemistry (AC) in the definite region, University, and division. According to the new plans, the number of the total class hours in the fundamental part of the basic course of AC and the duration of the students’ research decreased. The course work on AC and summer technological practice were deleted. Conversely, for the students majoring in AC (years 5 and 6), the number of class hours is now almost twice greater than before. Of course, such changes widen the possibilities of AC divisions to give the M.S. students more knowledge in different areas of AC, since many new special courses are now taught. Novel forms of carrying out seminars appeared, such as students’ presentations on earlier given topics, team-building tasks, etc. Besides, there are many obligatory interdepartmental courses (in different areas of sciences, not only in chemistry) for students, who can choose any of them. Novel rules of final exams and diploma thesis defense for specialists are implemented in some RU and MSU in particular. One more novelty is the active introduction of distant online lectures (with the help of telecommunication networks on a special website, learning management system) for teaching students and improving qualification of professors of those RU that do not have good specialists in some modern areas of AC. The online lectures are delivered by the colleagues of the other Universities having the necessary knowledge.