Introduction. Developing socially and professionally significant personal qualities of future engineers is an urgent scientific and practical problem of developing modern technical universities. Currently, there are two trends in the scientific and methodological provision of educational work in the higher education system: the first focuses on the idea of unifying education in the light of traditional values defined at the state level; the second trend is related to the problem of the development of narrowly focused personal qualities and competencies that meet the needs of a specific professional activity. The lack of pedagogical solutions that ensure a logical relationship between the general and particular goals and values of education is a significant gap in modern educational theory and practice. Goal. Coverage of the results of scientific and pedagogical research aimed at ensuring the harmonization of the tasks of educating civil and professionally significant personal qualities for engineers in the educational work of engineering universities. Materials and methods. The study is based on a comparison of empirical data obtained during experimental work in large engineering universities. In addition, methods of generalizing analysis of normative documents and systematization of relevant scientific literature were used. In the course of the study, a new model of educational work management at an engineering university was tested. Results. Information on approaches to the development of goals and objectives of educating engineering students based on the traditional values of the Russian state is systematized, a modern approach to the development of a unified system of educational and developmental tasks for classroom and extracurricular work on the training of engineering personnel is proposed. The presented approach to the formation of educational goals and objectives of higher engineering education makes it possible to integrate traditional and professionally significant value orientations in a single educational process of a modern engineering university. The scientific ideas of harmonizing the tasks of education and development of students can be used to modernize the education systems in higher education organizations.