THE ROLE OF STUDENT RESEARCH WORK IN TRAINING ENGINEERING PERSONNEL AT THE STAGE OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

L. A. Gorbunova

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

The general meaning of the new social requirements for engineering education consists in training specialists capable of becoming active participants in the process of transforming science into a direct productive force at the various stages in the movement of science toward production. For this, it is not enough to be abreast of the latest scientific developments. It is no less important to master the methodology of scientific cognition, to develop the ability to conduct research, and to cultivate creative capacities. The achievement of this goal is advanced as one of the priority tasks for the further development of higher education in the country¹).

The coordination of the system for training engineers with the new requirements is only beginning. Today it still cannot be said that the educational process, in its teaching methods, has already become an instrument for the purposeful development of the thinking and creative abilities of future specialists. For the most part, students are not familiar with rational methods of mental work, do not know the methodology, logic, and psychology of searching for and assimilating knowledge, and do not possess the skills of the higher forms of intellectual work²).

So long as the solution of these tasks is not laid down as the initial principles in curricula and programs, in the organization and methodology of engineering education, the higher educational institution seeks to implement them outside the educational process, in other forms of work. In this respect, the promotion of student research work to the role of a special form of specialist training in light of the requirements of the scientific and technological revolution is taking place.

In assessing the place of student research work in the system of specialist training, various approaches are observed. The essence of one of them is the absolutization of this role, the understanding of SRWS as a universal means of solving urgent problems of higher education. The opposite view does not take into account the expansion of the functions of student research work and approaches it with the former

¹) See: Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, “On Measures for the Further Improvement of Higher Education in the Country.” Pravda, July 30, 1972.

²) See: E. Kh. Koemets, Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1968, No. 9; Yu. S. Pimenov, “Student—Lecture—Notes,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1967, No. 6; V. I. Chuprov, “Certain Features of the Spiritual Development of the Student’s Personality.” In: Youth, Its Interests, Aspirations, Ideals. Moscow, 1969.

by the standards of an extracurricular amateur, optional pursuit. One encounters a tendency to regard students’ scientific-research work in its contemporary forms as an episodic phenomenon in higher education, arising from the lag of today’s educational process in higher school behind the new needs of society.

In light of these most widespread approaches, which underlie the organization of SSRS in various higher educational institutions, the need becomes more acute to understand the fundamental place of students’ scientific-research work in the process of training specialists. Leaving aside two extreme, opposite points of view, let us try to answer a question that makes it possible to see the prospects of SSRS in engineering education. Thus, should the growing role of SSRS be regarded as a sporadic phenomenon of higher school, an impulse toward qualitative changes in the methodology of higher education, or does this growth testify to the process by which SSRS is becoming a norm of higher education? The reduction, in leading higher educational institutions, of the student design, research, and project bureaus that until recently were so widespread, and the development of progressive forms of educational-research work, would seem to confirm the first point of view. In practice, this approach is manifested in shifting the emphasis in the organization of students’ research work to the formation of research skills; the traditional goals of “student science” are obscured; the very concept of “students’ scientific-research creativity” is interpreted in simplified fashion.

It seems a more correct point of view to see in the present lag of higher education behind the needs of science and production not something out of the ordinary. Rather, it is a manifestation of new principles in the interrelation of science, education, and production, the establishment of closer, more mobile mutual dependencies among them, caused by the intensive entry of the engineering higher educational institution into the system of the scientific and technological revolution.

Consequently, even as traditional engineering education is brought into conformity with science and production undergoing revolutionary change, the task of constantly maintaining this conformity cannot be removed. In this respect, involving students in scientific work represents a flexible, mobile form that, above all, absorbs new tendencies in the development of science and production.

It is logical to suppose, in this case, that if research work at the initial stages of the qualitative transformation of the scientific-production sphere of society plays the role of a channel through which the main processes of the scientific and technological revolution penetrate into the higher educational institution and into engineering education, then it will be compelled to continue playing this same role of constant “advance warning,” of the revolutionizing of technical education, in the future as well. In other words, one should proceed from an understanding of the place of students’ scientific-research work as a consolidation of this role of a constant “disturber” of the essence and organization of engineering education.

Of course, this role is assigned to students’ scientific-research work as a component part of “higher-school science.” And such reasoning should be attributed first of all to the latter. But the special role of SSRS must also be emphasized. It is precisely the attempt to connect “student science” with personnel training that has revealed the necessity of emphasizing the specific goals and features of “higher-school science,” which is called upon not only to develop the scientific and technical conditions of social production, but also to train engineering personnel.

Such an understanding of the place of students’ research work compels us to view its present role not as a temporary one in the process of bringing current engineering education up to the level required by contemporary science and production, but as a manifestation of its fundamental purpose in the higher educational institution. This is also consistent with the understanding of the necessity of scientific work in the higher educational institution as a basic condition for improving the training of engineering personnel.

The specific place of students’ research work in the general system of specialist training should be defined in two interconnected planes: its role in forming the professionally required qualities of an engineer and its influence on the general development of the personality in the higher educational institution (the so-called educational significance of SRWS).

The formation of personality in the higher educational institution presupposes, above all, professional development. It may be said that in the formation of an engineer in the higher educational institution one should see a stage in the socialization of the personality, whose qualitative distinctiveness consists in professional education. The possibilities of scientific work in the professional education of a specialist are unlimited. Traditionally, we view them in terms of improving students’ theoretical knowledge and practical skills, as well as developing the thinking of the future engineer and his creative capacities.

Research work helps to develop in students an idea of science as a unified system of knowledge. It makes it possible to understand the role of general scientific and general technical disciplines in acquiring a particular specialty, to learn in practice to make use of the objective process of integration and differentiation of the sciences, and, in particular, to train specialists with these tendencies taken into account.

Research work is the most important sphere of engineering education, one that takes account of and embodies these regularities. The newest processes developing in science are most vividly embodied in engineering education precisely in scientific research. It is for this reason that student scientific work is often regarded as an impetus toward improving the methodology of higher technical education.

Students’ research work is a means of improving the practical training of specialists³. And the point here is not only the formation of special production skills, the acquaintance of students with the newest technical and technological characteristics of production, or the cultivation of production discipline and other traits of the engineer-production worker—although this in itself is very important and enriches our understanding of the social functions of research work. By shortening the period of adaptation of the young specialist to new production conditions, research work also carries with it a significant, though not clearly visible, national-economic effect. For losses due to the duration of adaptation (officially this period is defined as three years) may be regarded as a source of losses in the national economy.

The research work of a technical higher educational institution, directed (in the most general sense) toward applying scientific ideas and conclusions from discoveries to the technical-production complex of the national economy, embodies in a latent form the basic laws of the movement

³ Insufficient practical experience was indicated as a serious difficulty in the work of engineering and technical personnel by 45% (of those surveyed) in the group of engineering and technical personnel of research institutes, 28% among engineering and technical personnel of plant management services, and 14% among engineering and technical personnel of shops. See: Social Problems of Labor and Production. A Soviet-Polish Comparative Study. Moscow, 1969, p. 179.

science toward production. It contains within itself possibilities for forming the engineer as an “envoy of science” in production. By acquainting students, through concrete studies, with the general methodology of the movement of science toward production, student research work teaches the student methods of engineering-scientific work and cultivates the most valuable quality of an engineer’s thinking—problem-oriented thinking, the ability to see, feel, and pose problems, and to approach the analysis of production in terms of problems. Consequently, in light of the new demands of production, when specialists are expected to be capable of scientific and technical creativity, work aimed at forming practical skills must also acquire a new character. It must be directed toward cultivating higher practical skills, toward testing the capacity of thinking for work and its creative possibilities. Research work acts as a form of cultivating these higher practical skills; from this point of view, it may be qualified as a distinctive kind of industrial practice.

Student research work makes up for the insufficiency of engineering education from the standpoint of differentiation in the training of specialists. Involvement in various forms of organizing research gives students the opportunity to study the specific character of design and research labor and of the work of a scientific worker, to try their strength in various areas of engineering activity, and to acquire initial work skills. It is no accident, for example, that students who work actively according to an individual study plan defend dissertations 3–4 years after graduating from a higher educational institution. And work in a seriously organized student design bureau forms an almost fully prepared design engineer, whose diploma project immediately finds practical application.

In light of today’s striving to approach the intensification of higher education from the standpoint of strengthening the student’s educational labor, in the influence of student research work on the training of the specialist one should single out its effect on increasing the student’s cognitive activity.

Science in itself conceals enormous possibilities for developing the striving for knowledge. “The scientist studies nature not because it is useful; he investigates it because it gives him pleasure, and this pleasure is given to him because nature is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth experiencing. I am speaking here, of course, not of that beauty which strikes the eye, not of the beauty of qualities and visible properties... I mean that deeper beauty which is hidden in the harmony of parts, which is grasped only by pure reason. It is this that creates the ground, creates, so to speak, the skeleton for the play of visible beauties that caress our senses, and without this support the beauty of fleeting impressions would be very imperfect, like everything indistinct and passing. On the contrary, intellectual beauty gives satisfaction in itself and, perhaps, more for its own sake than for the sake of the future benefit of the human race, the scientist condemns himself to long and necessary labors”¹.

The development of interest in science as one of the stimuli for increasing cognitive activity also takes place within the framework of the educational process. Many instructors are now setting themselves the task of arousing creative, research-oriented attention to the course being studied. To this end they introduce students into the atmosphere of scientific discussions and controversial problems in the discipline being studied. Therefore, student research work cannot be regarded—

...as the sole means of developing students’ cognitive activity. As is believed in school pedagogy, the point should be a harmonious combination of independent search-based and reproductive cognitive activity; likewise, in higher education one should see the entire complex of work aimed at developing in students an interest in knowledge and understand the special place of student scientific research within this complex.

Research work develops cognitive activity, which helps to expand the system of incentives, since it acquaints students more broadly and thoroughly with the needs of society. And it is precisely the needs of society, acting upon the individual and impelling him to activity, that serve as incentives for activity.

It is enough to recall, in this connection, how the creation of student design bureaus and similar forms of real assistance by students to production gave, so to speak, a second wind to the development of students’ interest in science and in study. The possibility that arose of applying the knowledge being acquired in practice compelled student activists in SRSW to assess the level of their theoretical and practical training, to understand the gaps in their knowledge, and to approach the study of academic courses more consciously. Scientific work plays the role, as it were, of the first real-life test of a specialist’s theoretical and practical training. He usually undergoes such a test in the first years of independent work in production and becomes convinced of the inadequacy of his knowledge. Thus, 56.3% of 3,000 young specialists in Leningrad noted the need to illuminate more deeply the theoretical foundations of specialized disciplines in the higher educational institution, and 64.2% the need to cultivate practical skills in research work⁵). It is beyond doubt that transferring this test into the higher educational institution itself in the form of students’ scientific work can play not merely a declarative role, registering shortcomings in the training of a specialist, but can become an incentive for his own cognitive activity and for improving the educational process as a whole.

Speaking of the place of students’ scientific work in expanding the system of incentives for cognitive activity, one should also bear in mind the fact that, with its help, the most important moral incentives are strengthened: theoretical-cognitive, creative, search-related incentives, incentives of competition, prestige, and positive example⁶). The special significance of students’ research work in stimulating their cognitive activity is connected with the fact that introducing students to scientific research develops the so-called direct interest in study, i.e., an interest in the process of research itself. Direct interest in work has been recorded as the leading motive of the attitudinal structure in many studies⁷).

Finally, scientific work, by involving students in carrying out contract-based economic topics, also helps to strengthen material incentives in the development of cognitive activity.

Being by its very nature the maximally active form of cognition, student scientific research must find a special place in edu-

⁵) E. M. Sidorova. The Influence of Higher-Education Training on the Degree of Participation of Young Specialists in Scientific and Technical Creativity. Effectiveness and Training of Specialists. Kaunas, 1969.

⁶) The system of incentives is given according to Yu. A. Dmitriev. Certain Sociological Problems in the Study of the Technical Creativity of Inventors and Innovators. Author’s abstract, L., 1967, p. 12.

⁷) V. Yadov. Man and His Work. M., 1967; A. Ya. Levi. Cognitive Interest in the Structure of Motives of Behavior of Students of Higher School (“On the Problem of the Troika”). Sociological Studies of Educational and Pedagogical Work in Higher School. Scholarly Notes of Gorky State University named after N. I. Lobachevsky. Issue 91, sociological series, 1969, etc.

...in the process of strengthening the active, independent element in engineering education. In this respect they must move into the ranks of the leading forms in the general system of training engineers.

In addition, students’ scientific work must occupy a special place among the other forms of the educational process also because it is the most effective means of individualizing the educational process. In the sociology of higher education there is a tendency to regard individualized, differentiated training in an institution of higher learning as the principal condition for the effectiveness of an educational institution^8). Individualization, a differentiated approach to the process of forming engineering personnel, represents the best possible combination in higher education of social and personal interests. An individual approach in teaching and upbringing is evidence of a more rational embodiment of the principle “from each according to his abilities.” It also corresponds to the fundamental tasks of the fullest possible development of the personality, of its self-assertion.

An approach to training a specialist in a higher educational institution as a broad process of socializing the individual broadens our conception of the possibilities of scientific research work in the formation of an engineer.

First of all, scientific research work contributes to the very process of socialization in the higher educational institution. If by the socialization of an individual we understand his assimilation of the system of values of his social environment and thereby his transformation into a social individual^9), then involving students in the sphere of science and in scientific collectives will mean expanding the conditions for the fullest possible assimilation of the values of that social group which students potentially constitute. The general “atmosphere of scientificity” in the higher educational institution, the inclusion of students in this atmosphere, contain a multitude of possibilities, of which university practice as yet realizes only an insignificant part.

Science in itself is one of the ways of expanding the individual’s possibilities for socialization. But beyond this, involving students in the work of scientific research collectives means expanding the basis of their social practice. The task for the higher educational institution is a very serious one, if one takes into account that “the dose of social practice which the student receives in the higher educational institution is clearly small and does not give him the opportunity to ‘play through’ all the necessary social roles and, consequently, to acquire a stable system of life values”^10). Scientific research work, unlike other forms of the student’s social practice in the higher educational institution—for example, work in a construction brigade, patronage work in a school, and so on—is a “playing through” of the basic content of the student’s future social role, his professional role.

The increasing complexity of the role structure of the future specialist helps solve another very important problem which the higher educational institution is called upon to solve—the problem of broadening the range of his communication with other people as a condition for the development of the student’s spiritual and moral world. Scientific work broadens a person’s conception of...

^8) “The effectiveness of the institute is the result of differentiated training in college and of the skillful identification of a student’s inclination, provided that the most capable students are selected”—this is the conclusion reached by Napp and Goodrich in their studies. American Scientists of the Younger Generation, 1953, and The American Scientists and the Environment from Which They Emerged, 1952. Norman Kaplan. Sociological Problems of Science. Information Bulletin of the Abstracting Group. Issue X, 1966, p. 157.

^9) See: Materials of the exploratory project “The Relationship between Value Orientations and the Real (Manifest) Behavior of the Individual in the Spheres of Labor and Leisure.” The Individual and His Value Orientations. Information Bulletin, No. 4 (19).

^10) B. G. Rubin, Yu. S. Kolesnikov. The Student Through the Eyes of a Sociologist. Rostov-on-Don, 1968, p. 33.

…about his future role in production, makes it possible in practice to become aware of the interconnection and mutual conditioning of science and production, and to feel the social significance of the results of one’s activity. Finally, work for the needs of production broadens the student’s contacts with other social groups, teaches him to respect the production skills of workers, and to understand the interrelation between theoretical concepts and empirical experience in production.

Strictly speaking (i.e., bearing in mind the essence of the process of training an engineer, and not its forms), students’ scientific work should be approached as a component part of the formation of the engineer even in those cases when student research work develops outside the educational process, in addition to it. This conclusion follows from the increasingly widespread thesis on the relative separation of instruction and education in the higher educational institution, on the educational character of instruction and the instructional character of education, and on the fact that the engineer in the higher educational institution is shaped by the entire environment.

The provision on scientific work as a form of engineer training must be approached differentially. First of all, this must be done with regard to the types of specialists formed by the higher educational institution. Thus, with respect to the training of scientific personnel, we must speak of scientific work as the leading form of training. Scientific work is beginning to turn into the leading form of instruction in the training of the engineer-researcher; to some extent this is manifested in the training of the designer, but it affects the various technological specialties to a lesser degree. In our view, this is justified and explained by the framework of the scientific-technological revolution, which in the main affects only the technical structure of production.

Educational-research work, more vividly than all other forms, bears the principal semantic load of student science—the “scientification” of the system of engineering education. It is compulsory for all students. It has an organized and legally established system of control and incentives, fits harmoniously into the educational process, and is strongly connected with it.

The concept of “educational-research work” brings together diverse forms of including scientific research in the educational process. (In a number of higher educational institutions it is narrowed to individual research work, which all students in the 4th or 5th years must complete, since it is included in the curriculum.)

The system of students’ educational-research work may be defined by the following forms: completion of compulsory reports on narrow questions of general-scientific and general-engineering disciplines in the first years; inclusion in laboratory practicums of tasks of a research character; performance of scientific work during industrial practice; completion of course research work, course and diploma real design projects; study according to individual curricula.

Taken together, they reflect the forms and degree of entry of the scientific activity of the faculty collective, its scientific problematics and research methods, into the educational process of the higher educational institution. From this standpoint, the forms of students’ educational-research work are directly dependent on the scale, forms, and degree to which the basic contradiction of the higher educational institution is overcome: the contradiction between the work of the higher educational institution to develop the scientific-technological potential of society (here the higher educational institution acts as a scientific institution) and the work of training engineering personnel (the higher educational institution as an educational institution).

The diversity of practices in organizing students’ educational-research work can be represented as an objective process of forming a definite system of students’ educational-research work—a process that, in general outline, is being recognized in higher educational institutions. Each of the forms of educational-research work in this system must carry a definite semantic load. Taken together, they are directed toward forming a definite complex of qualities required of a specialist. The practical work of departments should be built, in this light, on a clear understanding of why certain forms, and not others, should be developed; what it wants to obtain from each form; how to realize the possibilities inherent in one or another kind of educational-research work, and so on. There is no need to prove that today this work is to a considerable extent spontaneous.

Understanding that the full solution of the question lies with specialists, and that concrete practice may generate the most varied approaches to solving it, we shall nevertheless attempt to systematize the existing forms of ERW, and to determine the special place of at least some forms in the process of training a specialist.

Real diploma design appears in this system as the pinnacle of educational-research work. This labor of an almost fully formed engineer is conducted at the concluding stage of his training; it is the criterion of the quality of this training. Therefore, probably, real design is also established in public opinion as the principal way of raising the quality of the specialist.

As an independent application of the future engineer’s theoretical and practical knowledge, of the research approach and skill, the real diploma is a test of the entire organization of forming the specialist at the department, of the level of its theoretical developments, their comprehensiveness, their applied significance, the development of the department staff’s scientific-methodological work, and so on.

In this sense, diploma work may be regarded as an objective criterion of the quality of specialist training. The higher educational institution is in great need of such objective criteria and seeks them in production. Special methods are even being created for checking the quality of specialist training. Diploma design contains within itself the possibilities of an “intra-institutional,” close², but nevertheless objective, criterion. It is precisely in this respect that the scientific-methodological work of departments should be structured.

All the other forms of educational-research work may be united by the fact that they are all preparatory stages for real diploma design. Some of them cultivate a taste for scientific research—the reading of elective courses, reports on particular questions of general courses; they provide the first skills of searching, of informational search—the same reports, research laboratory practica. Others provide skills of practical work—laboratory practica and research-and-production practice.

Approaching real diploma design in its independent character and in significance is course real design—

…design, research-oriented course projects, scientific work within the framework of the curriculum, and study according to an individual plan. Study according to an individual plan has received the least dissemination and development, although it has been known in higher-education practice for quite a long time. Analyzing the specific aims that compel the use of this form^12), one may conclude that study according to an individual plan is intended to train, within the framework of traditional engineering education, new types of specialists, taking into account the regularities of the development of science and production. Individual training appears in this light as the overcoming of a contradiction between the new content of specialist training and the obsolete forms of organization of engineering education. This form of specialist training is assigned a special role—the formation of a specialist for scientific-pedagogical and scientific-research work^13).

The special target purpose of work according to an individual plan requires a conceptualization of the practice of organizing it in the higher educational institution. For example, it is necessary to clarify the expediency of mass development, of its use for training broader groups of specialists. It is advisable to approach individual instruction as the first trial of changing the content of engineering education in its mass form from the point of view of changing the ratio of disciplines, their content, methods of study, and so forth.

The introduction of scientific-research work into curricula is serious scientific-methodological work for the department. To unfold it, certain official sanctions and enormous methodological efforts on the part of the teaching staff are needed. The scientific-methodological work of departments must be conducted both in terms of introducing forms of educational-research work and in terms of realizing its educational, formative, and applied (significant for the national economy) possibilities. Thus, for example, in order for a project to become truly real, certain organizational, methodological, and even material efforts are necessary, aimed at ensuring that production enterprises learn about the project. A special advantage in this respect is offered by design work within the framework of contract-based economic themes. Similar efforts are required for the realization of the specific goals of each of the forms of educational-research work. Nor can the formation of the very system of SRWS be considered complete.

In addition, the introduction of educational-research works may give rise to serious difficulties of a seemingly unexpected character.

Thus, the introduction of research works into the educational process, in whatever diverse forms they may be implemented, is fraught with one serious contradiction, foreseeing and forestalling which is a matter for the teaching staff. Students, and each individual student in particular, solve some (often insignificant) share of the scientific problem of a department, laboratory, or scientific-research institute—

^12) Professor N. P. Bogoroditskii (Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute) formulates three aims of study according to an individual curriculum: more profound differentiated training, training of a specialist with an integral profile, and training in 2–3 related specialties. Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1966, No. 3.

^13) “For the purpose of improving the theoretical training of students who are subsequently directed toward scientific-research and pedagogical work in higher educational institutions and scientific-research institutes, to introduce and develop study according to individual curricula.” Collection of Instructional Materials on the Organization of Students’ Scientific and Educational-Research Work. Moscow, 1970, p. 95.

institute. In essence, he is the executor of individual assignments. This requires the special identification and emphasis of the independent place of the student-researcher within the general scientific collective. At MEI, in this connection, it was found necessary for the student to defend, before a commission, a report on his educational-research work. For these purposes, other work may also be carried out: informing students about the general scientific problem and the share of their participation in solving it, and so forth. Otherwise, when research work is introduced into the framework of the educational process, the aura of a scientific atmosphere may be dimmed; students will not feel their involvement in solving the department’s scientific problems, and will not realize that this work is intended to develop their creative abilities and instill in them the skills of research work.

The transfer of student research into the framework of compulsory classes therefore requires that the research aspects of the educational process be emphasized and accentuated. Without such emphasis, they are not always recognized by students as scientific work, which makes them less effective.

Serious difficulties arise in the introduction and broad development of students’ educational-research work in connection with the narrowing of collectivist principles in students’ academic labor^14). Only in a collective does the student acquire certain social qualities. The replacement of the student academic collective by a scientific collective into which a student working on scientific problems is introduced is already, in itself, a kind of solution to the problem. But because of the ambiguity of the collectives themselves, the different goals before them, and the different possibilities for the manifestation of activity within them, this substitution cannot be regarded as equivalent. Hence the need for serious work to cultivate collectivist principles in the student’s academic labor.

If one takes into account that the forms of educational-research work have not yet been fully formed—so to speak, not yet polished—and that their systems are still in the process of formation, then the transformation of research work into a form of specialist training under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution should today be regarded as the most important tendency in the development of student science, first, and in the improvement of engineering education itself, second. This tendency underlies all the principal qualitative transformations of students’ research work. Within its framework, the traditional forms of scientific work at a higher educational institution are being improved: scientific circles, scientific societies, student design bureaus, research groups, and production-experimental shops.

The growing subordination of all forms of organization of student research to the tasks of training specialists does not exhaust the content of the process of improving student science. At the same time, within it another strong tendency is developing—the movement of educational-research work toward the enhancement of its significance for the national economy.

^14) School pedagogy characterizes the contradiction between the collective system of instruction and the individual character of the assimilation of knowledge as a fundamental contradiction of the educational process; in this connection it sets the task “of strengthening the individual approach in instruction, of ensuring an individual cognitive process under collective forms of its organization.” R. A. Khabib. Individualization of instruction in light of the requirements of the scientific organization of the educational and upbringing process (Soviet Pedagogy, 1969, No. 7, p. 83).

In other words, there is a convergence of educational-research, scientific-research, and production-research work³.

Thus, student research in leading technical higher educational institutions contributes to the convergence, in engineering education, of scientific, educational, and production goals, and constitutes the concrete higher-education process in which these goals merge.

1. H. Poincaré. Science and Method. Odessa, 1910, pp. 11–12. ↩

2. The need to develop criteria for the effectiveness of specialist training within the very system of higher technical education was discussed at the symposium in Kaunas. See: M. I. Ganov. “The Educational Process in the System of Training Scientific and Technical Personnel.” In Efficiency of Specialist Training. Materials of the Inter-Republic Symposium. Kaunas, 1969. ↩

3. The interrelationship of these tendencies is clearly recognized by engineering education. “It is very important to bring the research conducted by students as close as possible to the most urgent problems of science and technology, and at the same time to link it inseparably with the tasks of the educational process.” V. I. Krutov, Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the USSR, Student Scientific Creativity. Moscow, 1968, p. 24. The Moscow City Council for Student Scientific Work formulated this inseparable unity as follows: “The task of the educational-methodological departments of higher educational institutions is to bring students’ research closer to the most urgent problems of science and technology and, at the same time, to establish an inseparable connection between it and the tasks of the educational process.” Moscow City Council for Student Scientific Work under the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol. Current Archive. Transcript of the Second Session of the Council. October 1968, p. 28. ↩