The article analyzes methodological approaches to constructing a didactic model of specialist courses in Ukraine and France. It is found that the main elements of higher education are knowledge, modes of activity (abilities, skills), creative search activities and emotional education. It is specified that knowledge is a system of determined acquired concepts, patterns of phenomena and objects of the objective world. It is clarified that the system of knowledge gained from specialist courses contains the following types of knowledge: scientific (scientific data on which a particular course is based); scientific and historical (the evolution of concepts, ideas and ways of their discovery); methodological (a set of knowledge about science methodology); philosophical, logical and interdisciplinary (the reflection of scientific connections in educational information); evaluative (the description of the individual's relation to the world and his/her system of values). It is stated that the modes of activity are viewed as general scientific, professional and specialist abilities and skills and in terms of psychology -- sensory, motor, sensory and motor, intellectual ones. Intellectual skills and abilities include note taking, working with reference literature, writing abstracts and reviews, preparing simple projects (maps, diagrams). It is noted that creative search activities imply a readiness to find solutions to new problems. They also involve applying knowledge and skills in non-standard conditions, considering a new problem under normal conditions, combining well-known modes of activity independently and applying a fundamentally new way of solving the problem. It is highlighted that emotional education is characterized by evaluative knowledge and norms of relation to the world. It is proved that the difference between academic courses and science lies in the fact that it includes only the main principles of one or another field of knowledge within a particular science available for students to acquire.