Abstract
The article examines the theoretical foundations of the formation of research competence of students of non-pedagogical universities, the relevance of this study is the issue of the comprehensive development of both the personality itself and the specialist with research competence, the implementation of the research competence-based approach is a way to maintain a unified educational, cultural, value and professional -qualification space, as well as the factor of merging with the world educational space, a table has been drawn up the main characteristics of the concept of «competence», identifying the essence and structure of research competence, deriving the definition of the phenomenon, the concepts associated with this category are analyzed cognition, creativity, activity, culture, independence of research competence, where it implies the desire for independence of thought associated with criticality, analytics, creative orientation