Professional Identities and Career Plans of Students Studying at Military Engineers Specializations in Saint-Petersburg

There is a difficult situation still remaining in Russia with military, as well as with engineering staff. After the USSR breakdown , the prestigiousness of education in these spheres has dropped significantly. Nowadays, our state is actively trying to fill the gap, which formed during post-soviet times, using various methods. In this regard, according to authorities, engineering and military structure experts are necessary for our country. Among the main government strategies there is increasing prestigiousness and social status of these professions, and there also is the goal of improving quality of education itself in order to ultimately get educated and highly qualified experts. At this point, there have been many sociological researches conveyed on the matter of the identity of a militarian person and of an engineer. In the course of this work, a lot of attention was drawn to studying the interconnections between these identities, because there is a lack of complete understanding of the profession of a military engineer. The main goal of this paper is to explore professional identities and career plans of the students who study to become military engineers in Saint Petersburg. Within the course of study, 13 semi-interviews were collected with students of the naval institute majoring in shipbuilding. In general, the results demonstrate that cadets similarly define the identities of a militarian person and of an engineer. They view such experts as responsible and educated, those who know their duty and who are helpful for the society. The versatility of such education helps them to boost their career not only in one direction. For them, it matters to serve for a certain period of time, and then switch to the civil sphere.