Home – Home – Jornals – Professional Education in the Modern World 2019 number 1

The paper analyzes processes and results of the commercialization and commodification of education seen as leading trends in Russian and world education. Methodology and research methods. Theoretical analysis of the problems appeared in Russian and world education was carried out in the context of socio-psychological and practical psychological analysis of its trends. The world and all spheres of its existence and development, as one of the manifestations of the phenomenon of globalization, taking place in the context of a systemic crisis of capitalist relations, is experiencing an intensive growth of the processes of commercialization and commodification. These processes are the most significant where commercialization, contrary to the traditions and basic meanings of this or that practice, seems to be a natural part of activities. One of these areas is education. Modern primary, secondary and higher education in the countries of the former USSR and many other former countries of the «socialist camp» are experiencing an intense crisis. They are increasingly desacralized whereas, their conceptual basis is almost completely lost. It becomes not an institution (of retransmission and creativity) of culture and human development, not an institute of care for the younger generation, but an institution for the sale of services for the (trans) formation of a «serviceperson». Commercialization in the conditions of desacralization goes into total commodification. Education becomes the business of delivering «educational services.»The state bureaucracy, as well as heads of corporations and enterprises of various types actively and systematically intervene in the processes of education. Their goal is to impose education, starting from the very first stages and ending with the last ones, their schemes, values, formats. These goals of consumption and exploitation of human and other resources are alien to education as early as possible. As a result, the selection and upbringing and training of professional, corresponding to a certain organizational culture of personnel goes into the formation of specialists with a narrowly limited, special set of knowledge, allowing to perform certain production and everyday functions, but not allowing a person to self-realize, form and develop themselves as an individual. Large-scale and aggressive penetration of alien ideas and structures of relations, the seizure of education by ideology and technologies of the «mar- ket»type leads to the phenomenon of «death of the university», other levels of education. The systemic crisis of education, deformations in the relationship of a person with himself and the world is the result of desacralization, the identity of ignorance and alienation. However, universities and schools, as specific for each time space of the dialogue of generations, the creative dialogue of man and culture, continue to evolve. Their forms change and are refined, in a battle with consumerism and commodification, their priorities and functions. They continue to exist not as functions of governing the state by «faceless masses». They continue to exist not as a function of the exploitation of human resources by business, but as a function of cultural transmission and development. Commercialization can be a situational and insignificant component of the successful work of universities and schools, but not the goal and not the main condition for their livelihoods.