Development of Engineering Education in Russia: A Historical Perspective

Presently, more and more scholars agree that it is high time the engineering education system was reformed. In this articles we have made an attempt to look at the future prospects of engineering education development through the prism of the historical experience of training engineers in Russia; we have also endeavoured to match the periods of technical breakthroughs with the respective states of engineering education. In Russia has witnessed several paradigm shifts regarding engineering education which included different answers to the following dilemmas: 1. Training "creme de la creme" highly qualified professionals, managers and de-signers or training mediocre technical specialists on a large scale. 2. Narrow curricula including only specialized subjects or harmonious and versatile development of professionals by including humanities in the curricula. Which part of each dilemma to choose was largely determined at each historical stage by advances in science and technology as well as by socio-economic and political processes in Russia. Future tendencies of engineering education system development will be to a large degree determined by the results of the Fourth industrial revolution (with its accent on IT-related skills and soft skills) as well as by the societal, political processes in the country and globally (globalization, crisis, pandemics etc.)