The purpose of postcollegiate professional education is to train scientific and science education cadres of higher qualification. To a large extent, systematic and well-planned training accomplishes the tasks of maintaining and developing the country's constructive scientific, cultural, and intellectual potential; it ensures the continuity of the traditions of schools of science and pedagogy and serves to form the social elite whose members perform the functions of political and economic administration. In this paper, the authors contend that graduate programs in Russia are in need of fundamental changes on the conceptual level, and that it is essential to take a careful approach to the question of how to determine the effectiveness of these programs.