Introduction. High requirements for the level of professional competence of a modern teacher, the ambiguity of the ideas of pedagogical universities about the generalized results in the field of professional education of a bachelor of pedagogical education necessitate adjustments in the areas of educational work at a pedagogical university. The purpose of the study is to identify and justify new opportunities and popular areas of professional education at a pedagogical university, aimed at developing the universal competencies of future teachers. Materials and methods. The work comprehensively used such research methods as the study and content analysis of normative documents, programs of educational work of universities, comparative analysis, the method of expert evaluation. The authors have developed a special toolkit that allows experts to use a unified approach when evaluating the documents-regulations of educational work; indicators of the educational work of universities have been identified. The study was conducted in 2020-2021. The sample consisted of 33 pedagogical universities and 9 classical universities. As a result of the experiment, the information presented on the websites of 42 universities from 9 federal districts, pedagogical orientation – from 31 regions of the Russian Federation and classical universities from 9 regions of the Russian Federation was analyzed. Research results. Comparison of universal competencies with the main areas of educational work of universities made it possible to identify the main areas of professional education. An analysis of the educational work of universities showed that future teachers of many educational organizations do not fully master the necessary competencies due to the lack of certain areas of educational work that can form their professional and personal competencies. In the process of analyzing the quality of educational work programs, the following results were obtained: 1) only 23.8% of universities are focused on the implementation of educational work in all major areas; 2) about 52% of universities in their programs of educational work covers only some of the main areas; 3) Approximately 23.8% of programs are not oriented at all. Conclusions. The presented comparative analysis can serve as a point of growth for pedagogical universities to rethink educational areas that currently do not allow students to form the competencies that are in demand.