Postgraduate Programs

Postgraduate education constitutes the main format for training the future teaching and research staff at universities and research organizations. Postgraduate programs are available for those who have obtained a specialist degree (five years of education) or a master degree. Postgraduate education can be completed within full-time (3 years) or extramural (4 years) formats. Upon its completion, the academic degree of “Candidate of sciences” is conferred.

Postgraduate studies are meant for those who strive to understand and develop science and research. It is based on independent effort made in order to acquire research experience and master research methods. Working on their dissertations, postgraduate students are to:

• individually define research direction that would be relevant or interesting to them;
• select a research topic;
• study scientific literature pertaining to the subject;
• organize and carry out an experiment;
• obtain and process data;
• compare the results obtained with data already existing in this particular field of research;
• draw conclusions.

Every postgraduate student has a research supervisor. As a rule, this is a member of university faculty or staff who has an academic degree, carries out research and delivers lectures. Highly qualified faculty and staff, i.e. 65 doctors of science and 26 candidates of science, provide research supervision to postgraduate students at TUSUR. A research supervisor offers advice on the subject, helps identify relevant research methods, provides assistance in experimental set-up and recommends useful scientific literature. However, the main focus of research supervision is guidance, while a postgraduate student finds his or her own way.

Postgraduate education is complete when a student has prepared final thesis («candidate dissertation») to defend it at the meeting of the Dissertation Council specialized in research area corresponding to the subject of the dissertation research.

Before the dissertation can be submitted to the Dissertation Council, postgraduate students are obliged to pass the so-called «candidate examinations» (qualifying examinations for the Candidate degree). In order to prepare for them, postgraduate students study history and philosophy of science, a foreign language and a specialized discipline depending on research area of the dissertation.

If a postgraduate student successfully defends his or her dissertation at the meeting of the Dissertation Council and this dissertation is approved by the Higher Attestation Committee of the Russian Federation, this student is awarded an academic degree of «Candidate of sciences». This academic degree is certified with a state diploma.