The evidence of appearance of post-transitional crises previously predicted by methods institutional economy is given on the base of data obtained by interview method. It is shown that decreasing of quality of engineering education in Kazakhstan may be considered namely as posttransition phenomenon, which is determined mostly by the inertia of mass consciousness that was formed during the period of transition from the plan economics to the market one rather than financial factors. Some possibilities of overcoming of observed negative trends are discussed.

ABSTRACT. It is shown, that objectives of degradation of Higher Education in most part of postsoviet countries are connected with the specific factors appeared at the economical situation appeared at the end of transitional period (transition from planned economy to market one). Decreasing of quality of higher education in such countries as Kazakhstan may be interpreted in frameworks of Baudrillard's concept of evolution of connection between "The Sign" and "The Reality"; such interpretation directly shows that overcoming of negative trends in post-soviet countries education cannot be realized by traditional administrative instruments. The problem may be solved by taking into account concepts of institutional economy.

In current conditions, higher educational institutions have to develop innovative mechanisms of education quality assurance independently. One such mechanism is the implementation of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model, although the 9001:2001 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) model is widely implemented in the higher education system of Kazakhstan. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) model is widely implemented in the higher education system of Kazakhstan. In-depth theoretical and methodological studies developed a design technology for a quality assurance system. The purpose of this study is to confirm the validity of this technology, which is why the study sets the following tasks: 1) to determine the validity criteria for the developed technology; 2) to show that the developed technology meets the validity criteria. An important result of this study is that it substantiated the criteria of the selected types of technology validity: construct, criterion, and content. The study proved that the developed technology met the criteria of validity, which was the main result. This allows recommending higher educational institution in Kazakhstan to implement this technology.

A comparison is offered between the nature of the educational process in modern universities and classical universities that existed in the XIX and XX centuries. It is shown that the decline in the quality of education in modern universities is largely due to the significantly increased workload (more than 10 times) over the past hundred years, , which greatly complicates the conduct of research by full-time teachers and actually cancels the principles of Humboldt. It is clear that modern information technologies allow a return to the implementation of Humboldt's principles at a qualitatively new level. This can be provided by transition to the organization of educational process in "autocatalytic" mode when the information resources providing educational process are maintained by professional, non-academic staff. In this case, the role of the professorship is refocused on the performance of curatorial functions.

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