Educational Alternatives ISSN 1314-7277, Volume 14, 2016 Journal of International Scientific Publications www.scientific-publications.net Page 460 ON STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION FOR TRAINING AT UNIVERSITY OF RUSE TRACKED IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MAIN FUNCTIONS OF EDUCATION Boryana Todorova University of Ruse, 8 Studentska Str., Ruse 7017, Bulgaria Abstract The article deals with the main functions of education and related tasks. They are separated into groups stemming from the three aspects of education, viewed as a form, content and sense. At their base, also in three groups, the most likely motivating factors that young people are expected to share when applying for a certain university specialty, are brought out. So are the students who are already studying in the university. A questionnaire study has been held among the students from different specialties of Ruse University - engineering, health and humanitarian, so that their motivation for scholastic education may be studied. A correlation has been sought between the basic motives, brought forward by the students, and those ones, deduced on the basis of theoretical research. Key words: functions of education, education as form, content and sense, students’ motivating factors, motivation for education, questionnaire study 1. STUDIES ON THE MOTIVATION OF STUDENTS IN BULGARIA The motivation of candidate students, as well as students themselves, for training in various specialties of higher education in Bulgaria in recent years, has been the subject of analysis and research in a number of documents and publications. We will note only a fraction of them. The Strategy for Development of the Higher Education in the Republic of Bulgaria for the period 2014- 2020 (2015) was ratified by a Decision of the National Assembly on February 26, 2015. The document reports a reduction of interest among potential candidates to pursue a higher education in Bulgaria. T. Kotseva and others, within the project study, investigated the attitudes of students and their opinions on motivated attendance at classes (Kotzeva, Baltadjieva & Mineva 2013b, 2013a). The methods used include: focus group with students, a questionnaire to study the causes of attendance and absenteeism of classes, semantic differential and a self-estimating questionnaire about life plans of students in the short and long run. A contribution to research is "A questionnaire to assess the level of academic motivation" of A. Velichkov (Radoslavova & Velichkov 2005) containing eleven statements. Through the answers to seven of them the high motivation of the students is sought for. These relate to: striving to obtain permanent knowledge, seeking additional information on an interesting problem, pursuit of high success, attendance of lectures, seeking information from teachers, in libraries and internet, taking down notes during lectures. The other four are proven low motivation. They report: learning for minimum knowledge, a lack of interest in theoretical details, cutting lectures and seminars due to lack of interest in school material, a lack of interest in learning and its meaning. This questionnaire has been used in studies of other authors (Andonova 2010; Bayrakova 2015). S. Bayrakova explores the importance of professional values in individual career choices with candidate students and proves that they tend to choose subjects that have similar value content with their own values. She highlights the link between the students’ value orientations and their academic motivation. To determine the structure of value orientations with the students who are engaged in the research, a factor analysis is applied. Sorted according to their “heaviness”, obtained as a result of the study, the factors are as follows: materialistic orientation, orientation to themselves, orientation towards independence, challenge orientation, orientation toward others.