According to the national project in the field of education, the number of foreign students in Russian universities should double by the end of 2024 - to 425,000 people. This means that every tenth student will not be a citizen of Russia. Why are there so many of them?

Maybe we are just trying to catch up with the division of a new valuable resource - a hundred years ago oil, now human capital? After all, we are not unique in setting the goal: Canada four years ago set a course for 450,000 foreign students by 2022 - this is also a two-fold increase. France has similar figures: from 245,000 to 500,000 people by 2027. The Indian government has the biggest ambitions, which aims to attract 200,000 students by 2023 - four times more than now. The goals complement multi-level engagement strategies, which could include everything from visa facilitation to rebranding the country's universities.

There is a fierce struggle for the quality of students, as well as for the quantity. Of the 6 million mobile students in the world, about a third are the future intellectual and technological elite. They are what top universities and national economies are most interested in. Hence the sharp increase in scholarship offers and increasingly sophisticated ways of attracting talent: everything from online courses to proprietary mobile applications is used as an advertising tool.

At this time, the image of Russian education abroad leaves much to be desired. There is a positive trend in international ratings, but it has not yet translated into increased attractiveness. In order for the goal of 425,000 international students to become realistic, and even more so for elite students to be a significant part of the influx, a change in international positioning, a fundamentally different behavior of universities and a change in government regulation of their activities are necessary. And here we can’t do without answering the question with which we started the article: for what? Why are foreign students needed? We have enough of our own.

The standard answer is for additional funding. The standard answer - and limited. You can also earn income from Russian paying students. And the student elite, choosing between Russian universities and universities, for example, in Northern Europe, where education is mostly free and scholarship programs are plentiful, would rather choose the latter, so we cannot raise the tuition fee bar. Finally, students are not primarily sources of funding, but individuals with their own goals. They are not only clients, but also partners in the educational process.

Most industries, from agriculture to IT, already have a global market and technological context. Developing such global competence during training is much more effective than mastering it through trial and error later. And courses on regional studies and English twice a week will not get by here. Constant communication and joint teamwork with students from other countries are required, which precisely develops the ability to act in different national contexts.

The usual objection: but what if our graduates, having become in demand, leave? Yes, but the artificial retention of talent is from the same ideology of the day before yesterday as the travel ban for scientists recently proposed by one of the academicians as a solution to the problem of the outflow of intelligence. The university as a type of organization is historically and fundamentally global. Now, after two hundred years of dominance of the national university, we are returning to a global university. And this is not a collection of isolated institutions, but an informal academic network through which students, teachers and ideas move. To be considered universities, our universities need to become part of it.

But what about national security issues? They are relevant not only for us, and we are not the only ones who pose them. In most cases, they are resolved by differentiating levels of access - for example, in Swedish universities, students with any citizenship except Iran and North Korea are allowed to enter laboratories involved in nuclear development. To preserve national secrets, it is not necessary to surround all higher education with barbed wire.

From a security point of view, the isolation of Russian universities is a problem in itself. They themselves narrow their zone of influence. Graduates of what we perceive as an elite closed institution, but in fact a very cosmopolitan Harvard, are members of the boards of directors of 300,000 companies around the world; 20 graduates became heads of state outside the United States. All top universities, from Oxford and Cambridge to the French Grandes Ecoles and Chinese leaders like Peking University and Tsinghua University, are actively internationalizing - Peking University has opened a campus of its business school in the British Oxford to become even closer to foreign students. Internationalization is done for security, not in spite of it. This is called soft power.

With the exception of a few new, unconventional institutions that emerged after the collapse of the USSR, Russian universities do not have coherent internationalization strategies. It is assumed that a dozen or two programs in English, courses in Russian as a foreign language and a satisfactory number of foreigners for reporting are more than enough.

We attract foreign students and then place them in a kind of educational reservation. The rest of the intellectual and even physical spaces of the university are inaccessible to them due to language and cultural barriers. It’s easier for universities – you don’t need to change anything. But mobile students are valuable precisely as a full and inseparable part of the student community. And true integration involves changing the organization of all university processes and policies.

Thus, it is absurd to assume that personnel policies can be left unchanged: the increase in the number of international students must keep pace with the internationalization of the teaching staff. Moreover, the best teachers are simultaneously engaged in research and build their courses on their own scientific developments, and not on standards imposed from above. It is obvious that the research process is international: all breakthrough modern scientific projects from microworld physics to genetic engineering are carried out in international collaboration.

Nor should it be thought that international universities can be managed without a global network of contacts and a global vision. We are practically not included in the global discussion about higher education. If in the last century we managed to create interesting educational models in isolation - such as the Physics and Technology Institute or the university in the Novosibirsk Academgorodok, now the situation in higher education requires participation in the conversation about models and methods. We continue to lag behind while other countries are actively sharing experiences.

Finally, there is the issue of the university environment, which is painful for any foreign student in Russia. Mobile students now need personalized support before arrival, clear protocols for intercultural communication, and a whole package of additional services. Most often you can hear comments along the lines of “we already have all this!” But in practice, even such simple technical conditions as English language proficiency by the administration or hostel commandants, uniform requirements for foreign and Russian citizens in the learning process, etc. are not met - and this is without raising the expensive issue of the comfort of the physical space.

There is also a direct macroeconomic benefit from the influx of intelligence. The UK today receives about $30 billion from foreign students, the US – $39 billion, and this does not include the economic effect from the activities of graduates who remain after their studies. In Australia, education exports generate $25 billion - third place after iron ore and coal exports. At the same time, the entire consolidated budget of the Russian higher education industry is approximately $15 billion.

For the tasks of accelerated economic development, there is world practice of creating special economic zones and territories of priority development. We may well be approaching the historic need to create a “special academic zone” for a group of universities – with special rules of autonomy, financial support and increased requirements for the internationalization of activities.

The authors are experts from the Skolkovo School of Management

Why does Russia need foreign students?