Elite education and problems of forming professional elites

¹ Astrakhan State University, Department of Political Science, Astrakhan, Russia

^* Corresponding author: Pavel_karabushenko@mail.ru

Abstract

The real world is experiencing serious transformational changes associated with the crisis of the globalist (monopolar and multicultural) project and the growth of post-industrial trends. Under these conditions, the role of many professional elite communities is also changing, as well as the emphasis of their assessments and roles in the global social process. Since elites are in every field of professional activity, it is needed to study the phenomenon of the elite from the viewpoint of the community of certain selected groups responsible for forming a response to the challenge of their era. The goal of the present work is to show the role of elite (open and high-quality) university education in the formation of professional qualities of contemporary elite communities. The authors used various methods ranged from dialectics and hermeneutics to comparative studies and semiotics. This set of research methods allowed penetrating the depth of the qualitative parameters of elite communities, as well as giving them a comprehensive assessment. In this regard, a special role is given to the principles of personalism, which reveal the depth of the elite personality and the meaning of their creative process. It is this task, i.e. uncovering the meaning of the work of outstanding personalities that is a new word in the development of modern elitology as the science of elite (as a form) and elitism (as content). The results of the present work concern justification of the need for elite education in the implementation of meritocratic projects and gradual abandoning of the dominance of oligarchic interference in its technological processes. The novelty of this situation lies in the fact that universities have to strengthen their qualitative potential in a transition period from late industrialism to early post-industrialism, which makes its impact on the whole process.