THE COMPETENCE OF MECHANICAL ENGINEER: THE SYSTEM APPROACH TO THE ORGANIZATION OF THE PROFESSIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION

Recent economic growth in Ukraine has caused a great demand for engineers, in particular mechanical engineers. It is expected that in the next years the need for these professionals will only increase. Moreover, the requirements for training mechanical engineers are constantly growing because the complexity, the accuracy and the performance of the designed or operated equipment have also increased. The requirements for the working conditions, the environmental protection, the ability to readjust quickly to new methods of production have increased too. Today Ukrainian universities cannot satisfy the need of the industry for either the quantity of mechanical engineers or the quality of their training. The lack of high-qualified mechanics has caused a lot of problems at the Ukrainian enterprises. There are several reasons for the disproportion between the quantity of mechanical engineers and the demand of the Ukrainian labour market for them. Firstly, the profession of the mechanical engineer is not very popular among young people because the study program at the university is difficult, and, what's more, now a lot of factories and plants are closed after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Besides, a lot of new engineering and humanitarian specialties have appeared in the curriculum of Ukrainian universities during the post-soviet period and young people have a big choice. So, nowadays the problem of preparation of the young people to choose the faculty of mechanical engineering is actual. The problem of professional self-determination is very important for young people who are finishing secondary schools. The proper choice of the profession creates the best conditions for development of the intellectual abilities, the professional career, the effective work after graduation from higher school. We believe that the creation of the dynamic information system will solve the problem of the professional self-determination. Such systems will direct young people to the mechanical engineering faculty because they will have much information about this profession and necessary inclination to work as mechanics, and they will want to work at the factories. This system consists of several sub-systems - «Terms of university's instruction», «Working conditions», «The results of the professional activity» - which are connected with the system «Informational environment» by the feedback. The informational environment will form young people's real conception about the essence of the activity of the mechanical engineer at the industrial enterprise. The feedback is the information about the terms of instruction at university, the information about working conditions at the enterprises, and the information about implementation of the engineering development in everyday life. It is necessary to track the process of the professional self-determination in real time. It will permit to react quickly for the decrease of its quality and to make adjustments. The result of this system functioning will be the admission to the mechanical engineering faculty those young people who will have appropriate abilities for the profession of a mechanical engineer, and will know job description and official instructions and regulations.