An educational startup as a form of graduate qualification work for students of a pedagogical university

The article examines and analyzes the experience of the Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education under the Startup as a Diploma program, which has been implemented in Russian universities since 2019. Within its framework, graduate students – future teachers develop educational business projects, presenting and defending them in the form of final qualification papers. The author of the article shares his experience in leading the preparation and defense of a thesis in the form of a startup by students of the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science of the Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education. It was based on a project to create and market an educational and methodological manual with electronic support for teaching a propaedeutic course «Introduction to Physics» in elementary school. The manual presents the author's program of the summer physical school for students in grades 1–4, lesson summaries and accompanying illustrative materials. In addition to the theoretical and practical aspects of pedagogical research, the final qualification paper in the form of a startup contains a financial and economic justification for the project, the development of which was carried out with the support of specialists in this field. The analysis of the results of the experiment on the introduction of the methodology of final certification of graduates based on the program «Startup as a diploma» in the Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education allowed the author of the article to identify the positive and negative aspects of its implementation in a pedagogical university.