Socio-demographic and professional characteristics of academic staff at a regional university

Introduction. The article investigates the problem of the quality of academic staff at pedagogical universities. The purpose of the article is to identify the socio-demographic and professional characteristics of academic staff at a modern regional university.. Materials and Methods. Materials and methods of the study include the conceptual works on the mission of a modern university, changes in the structure of the academic profession, concepts of modernizing teacher education in the Russian Federation. The authors have chosen theoretical analysis and extrapolation, as well as sociological methods (surveys of teachers, students, school principals, novice teachers, and heads of local departments of education) and interpretation of the obtained data as research methods. The study was conducted at Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V.P. Astafiev which is a Regional Pedagogical University. Results. The authors summarize the data of modern research literature on the key issues of quality in higher education and identify a set of negative factors affecting the quality of academic staff: general negative trends in aging academic staff, reducing the quality of teaching due to the predominance of teaching over research activities, overloading and new quasi-market control mechanisms. The authors reveal that the regional pedagogical university is in the global trend of aging university academic staff. The study shows no connection between the age and innovativeness of academic staff. The study indicates typical professional deficiencies of academic staff confirmed by student surveys. The authors compared the views of academic staff on modern school education with those of other subjects of the education system in the region. The authors justify the need for further investigating the conditions of developing modern professional competences in academic staff at a pedagogical university within the framework of contemporary challenges and requirements for the quality of general education and, accordingly, for the quality of initial teacher education. Conclusions. The authors have revealed the main socio-demographic and professional characteristics of the academic staff at the modern regional University.