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This article is dedicated to the pursuit of the ways of overcoming the crisis in university education in Ukraine, particularly at the department of history. By analyzing foreign experience, it is argued that the growing demand of society for history must be supplied by making experts with diplomas and degrees closer to the needs of the communities, as well as by finding new opportunities for the graduates at the labor market. Therefore, half a century ago professional historians have offered a new branch of training and subsequent activities, named public history. Currently, public history has spread practically all over the world: it is developing rapidly in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Ireland, China, India, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Anumber of universities of ferspecial courses of training, in the USA, for example, there areover 130. The graduates of the higher education institutions can findjob with in the broad opportunities of the creative industry. Recently in Ukraine, at the government level, the idea of promoting the development of this industry is advocated. But the problem of staff is pressing even more due to the mass emigration of employable population, particularly educational emigration. The demand for the activities of public historians is also caused by the importance of the so-called "soft force" of the state at the global level, as well as by the urgency of streng the ning identity at the level of the countryor a specific community. The development of public history esteem cooperation between professionals and laymen, interested in history of past and recent years. Public history is a history about the public, for the public and together with the public. The mentioned branch spans a wide scope of forms of working with the past, oriented at various audiences. For training experts, it is proposed to introduce an obligatory course "Public/practical history" at the senior-class students of relevant professional faculties of Ukrainian universities. The functioning of the universities in market conditions must be oriented on efficiency, pragmatism, instrumentalization. The suggested course is innovative, interdisciplinary and practice-oriented according to the leading global trends in education and science. The implied training has to combine strong theoretical foundations with state-of-the-art practical technologies of spreading historical knowledge, served by the informational society.