NEW CHALLENGES AND TRENDS OF THE SOCIAL REQUEST FOR ENGINEERING AND CHEMICAL TRAINING AT RUSSIAN TECHNICAL UNIVERSITIES
The new format of the international situation dictates for Russia a change in the vectors of industrial, scientific, technical, innovation and educational policy. The ideology of integration into global production chains and markets is being replaced by the ideology of ensuring the sovereignty of our country in the broad sense of this concept: political, humanitarian and, no less importantly, technological. Hence, one of the main directions of the development of domestic technical and technological universities is the acquisition of competitive positions in the field of import substitution projects. Engineering activity itself plays a special role in modern technical universities. It is important that engineering activity implies an understanding of the necessity to «fit» a technical project into the socio-economic environment. The implementation of engineering development projects requires personnel, technology and infrastructure. If we use the terminology of the «sixth economic order», then it also requires mastering the technology of assembling a «social subject», that is, those organizational structures and human capital that are able to implement projects of development. Global challenges and import substitution requirements format a social request for educational programs with an emphasis on «Chemical engineering» and «Industrial Engineering» as integrating a whole package of technical, technological, design and «business skills». Having analyzed the situation in the economy, the labor market and the curricula of leading foreign universities, we have identified four groups of competencies required by a modern engineer in the fields of professional activity related to industrial and chemical engineering: human and social capital development competencies, engineering competencies, business administration competencies, entrepreneurship competencies and industrial innovation management skills. All of them correspond to the trends of the new social demand for engineering training.