Young Students’ Attitude Toward Expert Knowledge

The paper focuses on training professionals for active innovative work against the backdrop of continual development of knowledge-intensive technologies and expert systems. The authors address the characteristics of the expert knowledge functioning related to science development and forecasting the future of digital culture. Emphasis is placed on the expanding role of expert communities and expert system functions in the evolution of modern network society as a knowledge society. Trends in the youth's attitude to research work and the scientific expert status are analyzed. The empirical research is carried out by means of sociological survey of students. The sociological surveys conducted by the authors at the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and the secondary data from other Russian universities show an increasing role of a student in the university scientific projects. It helps students gain the expertise needed to enter into a dialogue with the expert community. The research has shown that society demands a new interdisciplinary approach to training specialists that would be aimed at integrating the scientific knowledge and skills responsible not only for the role of a researcher but also for the role of an expert, capable of assessing innovation and competent prediction of its consequences for the social development in the digital era.