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The goal of graduate professional educational is to develop student competence. Competencies are a dynamic combination of knowledge, understanding, skills and capabilities. Some researchers have divided competencies into generic and professional categories. Generic competencies are those that apply across a variety of disciplines and play a crucial role in education, providing wider opportunities for graduates to find good jobs and advance their careers. This suggests that universities should pay considerable attention to increasing their students’ proficiency in these generic competencies.
This article compares a list of generic competencies developed in Russian universities with a similar list developed through a consortium of Russian and European universities (project TUNING-RUSSIA). It then makes a second comparison with a list of competencies drawn from the CDIO Syllabus. This comparison indicates the degree of similarity among these lists and the possible convergence among Russian, European, and American universities. The results are presented from a survey that was conducted among Russian employers, academics, and recent university graduates. The survey asked them to rate each listed competency by its importance and also by the degree to which graduating students are perceived to have achieved proficiency in that competency as a result of their university education.
Finally, this article describes how university courses were developed at Astrakhan State University to increase student proficiency in specific competencies. Results show that there is significance convergence of opinion on which competencies are important, that it is possible to identify those competencies on which students show lower levels of proficiency, and that courses can be developed to increase proficiencies in selected competencies.