Studying requirements for substantional list of professional knowledge for students of agricultural engineering specialities

Abstract

Training in agricultural universities of mechanical, process and design engineers for the field of agroindustrial production in modern conditions requires new approaches that provide a higher level of knowledge in comparison with the already working specialists. The research solved the following main tasks: a) consideration, establishment and analysis of the concepts of professional competence of an engineer; b) by means of expert survey of employers determination of rank correlation of necessary competences to consider aspects of their formation at engineering faculties of agrarian universities; c) by results of the expert survey establish whether a graduate of an engineering faculty has significant competences and exactly which, and after what time they began to manifest. The analysis of the results of the employers' survey has shown that the main and significant part of agribusiness managers believe that for graduates of mechanical and technological faculties, the important competence of higher engineering education is a thorough knowledge of the structure of modern high-tech equipment and agricultural machinery. Another part of the interviewed employers believe that the main competence of an agricultural engineer should be: firstlydeep theoretical knowledge, which forms the engineering competence of a specialist; secondly no less important, conscious understanding of the features of agro-business relations; thirdlyreadiness for selfimprovement. Graduate of an agro-engineering faculty of a university should acquire such knowledge, which will allow him at the beginning of his production activity to adapt as soon as possible to the real conditions. Then in insignificant time terms he is involuntarily forced to lag behind the "practitioners" at the beginning, but during the following terms from 1 to 19 months he gains advantage (according to the expert group survey), thanks to the new, acquired knowledge obtained through new teaching methods and with the help of IT-technologies.