The American system of university education is very different from ours. It was created in the country with the culture and traditions different from ours, in other socio-economic conditions. However, in recent years in our country there are many who want to apply this system in our universities. Of course, in the American system is much that we would do well to borrow. However, not all, even very good for their environment is suitable for us. It is not only (and not so much) to economic reasons, but in line with other major elements of the education system prevailing in our country - a system that is highly regarded throughout the world, including in the United States. At the same time the American system is sometimes overly idealized, and sometimes vice versa, as they say, is rejected in the bud. Both are, apparently, from the lack of a comparative analysis of Soviet and American systems of higher education.

In the U.S., the duration of secondary education is generally 12 years. In the U.S. higher education institutions receive full high school graduates with diplomas high school. By the standards adopted by, for example, in the UK, the U.S. document of complete secondary education equivalent to the English general education certificate ordinary level, not the giver in the UK the right to enter the universities. For this purpose, British secondary schools need to do 2 more years and receive a certificate of general education advanced level. Therefore, the owner of an American diploma of secondary school must carry an additional 1-2 years of college before enter in British universities. This is obviously due to the fact that in the UK own a high school graduate enrolled in the first degree (usually a bachelor's) in the natural sciences and humanities 3 years, and in the U.S. own a high school graduate receives the same degree after 4 years.

Education in American universities is conducted on three main levels with different content and purpose. The first four years (or equivalent time period in the correspondence course) Higher Education in the United States called the first stage of the assignment and completed a bachelor's degree. The word "college", although with certain nuances, often means or institutions granting only bachelor's degree (or, perhaps, master's, but not doctors), or the first stage of training at the university, ie the first 4 years of university education. Education in the first stage, we complete the assignment of a bachelor's degree is in a wide range and is not oriented to any professional occupation. At the same time assigned to the degree of Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree. However, there is a training and a bachelor's degree with a professional orientation. The curriculum for training at first degree (usually BA) in secondary colleges for 4 years, although individual schools on an experimental attempt to reduce this period, the first 2 years of study general subjects: English, foreign languages, humanities, mathematics, science and computers

Education is a bachelor's degree in three groups of courses: basic courses that provide general education in various fields, the core courses and elective courses. During the first two years of study, students study basic courses, introductory courses in their major areas of knowledge and some selective courses. In the past two years, students are engaged in, mainly, the main courses, as well as some elective courses that complement or deepen their knowledge of core courses. Usually the student is engaged in four or five courses a semester. Depending on the structure of the college and the students choose courses from 10 to 25 percent of the courses are purely optional, allowing students to visit to get acquainted with the various disciplines of interest to them, often even before the choice of their future specialization and related core subjects relevant curriculum. Furthermore, the presence of a large number of electives provides opportunities to develop areas that students are unlikely to ever have to learn in a formal program.

Education in a research school, top of which - the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), is mainly about 200 leading universities, almost all of them also have extensive training programs for bachelors. Usually in the same department and faculty responsibility, both for undergraduate and postgraduate (second stage), education, and professors who receive compensation, mainly for scientific research and research training of students in school, can be simultaneously teach one or two courses of the college, but, of course, their focus is primarily on postgraduate education, and work with dissertant (especially in science) to guide graduate with a doctoral degree. Even many of those U.S. universities that do not adhere strictly selective approach to student recruitment and have significant financial resources and political influence, while remaining accessible and not elitist in the first stage, nevertheless established on the basis of the same faculty and administrative structures of a number of the most famous in the world and obviously selective elite programs at the second stage and research institutes

The main thing in training students in U.S. universities to develop skills independent creative thinking and a broad outlook on the basis of modern ideas. In this regard, a number of general courses change the traditional order of the historical material, "from simple to complex," the student is introduced from the outset in terms of modern ideas of the science. Such a course of general physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where an attempt is made form the students in the early stages of learning of the structure of the physical world based on the concepts of relativity and quantum mechanics. In the general course in biochemistry (for medical colleges) reject the serial presentation of the properties of bio-organic compounds based on their classification. The basis is laid functional approach, which directly addresses the basic metabolic processes, and mechanisms of individual reactions and molecular properties involved in these compounds are disclosed in the course of the presentation of this material. One trend is in that program planning, which can give some general courses in biology, chemistry, geology, after passing through the series of fundamental physical and mathematical sciences, to highlight some common issues with using the methods of physics and mathematics at the level of general education. Some universities are special training sessions for students of the creative elements of the logic of scientific thinking. This is done by lethal parsing of specially selected original research articles and a detailed discussion of associated theoretical material. The purpose of the discussion is that students studying the actual material obtained by the author, do come to some scientific findings and decide the question of further experiments. Experience has shown that after appropriate regular exercise (three hours per week), students are guided successfully to problems of molecular genetics.