ИСТИНА

The education establishment in Russian society is called upon to meet the needs of individual learning and skills, and society’s need for trained specialists. Russian society needs to innovate and produce high-quality goods and services and this requires a skilled workforce. The main task of Russia's educational system is to provide high quality education that is relevant to the future needs of the individual, society, and state. To accomplish this requires the modernization of education, and this in turn requires policy changes at the national level. It should not and cannot be implemented locally at each institution. The interests of society and the state have not always coincided with the parochial interests of the education system itself, but the educational community and educational institutions need to be part of the modernization and development of education. Public policy and the socio-economic transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s had a significant impact on Russian education, resulting in academic autonomy of higher education institutions. This led to diversity in educational institutions, a wide variety of educational programs, and a private education sector. But dating back to the 1990s, the wide socio-economic crisis was slowing these positive changes. The federal government was largely not thinking of education so, education had to deal with its survival, and thus largely ignoring the real needs of the country. Education can no longer remain in a state of internal isolation and self-sufficiency. Active agents of educational policy should involve the federal and regional institutions of state authority, local governments, educators, and scientific, cultural, commercial, and civic institutions as well as all citizens of Russia.