The high level of personal involvement required by the foreign language learning process is even more difficult for our universities, where the demands of the academic environment are so high that not all graduate students acquire the necessary competencies to meet these requirements. The purpose of the article is to explore the background for acquiring foreign language competence in the academic environment. The research methodology is based mainly on theoretical methods, such as analysis of scientific papers and publications to identify the main problems of the article. The classification method is used to classify the main points of view on the selected problem. The broader goal of language education is independent communication in a foreign language, which is based on the premise that language skills learned in classrooms are easy to transfer to real situations, and that graduate students will gain the necessary experience at the end of the language program. But this is not the case, and the practical results of the acquired skills of communication in a foreign language almost always do not meet the language expectations of the applicants. The current state of educational services indicates a significant increase in the need for high-quality post-graduate education, providing applicants with relevant competencies relevant to the academic environment. In light of this, teachers and PhD students should spend much more time talking about why and how they teach and learn languages. It would also expand the scope of teaching beyond, as a rule, results-oriented, utilitarian orientation. This means paying attention to the teaching process and foreign language competence. More attention should be paid to subjectivity and PhD student experience, an important component of language acquisition. Post-graduate education established the imperative of the competence-based approach, while communicative competencies aren’t directed to the process of inclusion of PhD students in professional culture and remain underestimated.