How can Russia best internationalise its universities?

The internationalisation of higher education is developing globally and Russia is relatively new to this scene compared to other countries. One strategic component is to internationalise home campuses by hosting more foreigners. We may, by default, think this means enrolling foreign students, but it also includes attracting and hiring international faculty and postdoctoral researchers.

How do higher education institutions recruit skilled talent and what policies and initiatives – both at institutional and national levels – support these efforts? This article draws on 22 interviews with experts from nine leading research-oriented higher education institutions and two governmental organisations to consider how the internationalisation policy shapes mobility to Russia within the academic sector.

Policy and international recruitment initiatives

Russian higher education was historically insular – Russian universities competed against each other to attract Russophone foreign students. The higher education policies adopted over the past 10 years aimed to break this isolation by adopting international standards.

Recent policies such as Project 5-100, established in 2013, and the Export Education initiative, approved in 2017, encouraged Russian higher education institutions to internationalise more quickly. These two national policies are aimed at attracting foreign talent.

Explicitly, Export Education sets out to double or triple the number of foreign students by 2025, but Project 5-100 demarcates recruitment in another manner. Key performance indicators for the 21 member universities involve increasing their global rankings through academic publishing and quality teaching, increasing foreign student numbers, offering courses and programmes in English and establishing more international partnerships with foreign scholars and universities.

Five of the nine universities visited by the experts are Project 5-100 members, yet all nine have internationalisation strategies that include the key performance indicators listed above. To achieve this, departments attract, develop and hire skilled researchers and faculty.

Russian universities meet these needs through various initiatives. One of the most common ways is to establish international partnerships and joint research with leading scholars from highly ranked universities around the world.

Relationships begin informally based on collegial interactions. Partnerships can be institutionalised into formal exchanges, double degree programmes, faculty affiliations or short-term lecturer positions.

Second, universities invest in developing their current faculty. For example, Maria and Alexander, the two directors of the office of international development at a Project 5-100 technical-based research university, said that with federal funding they now have the resources to train their lecturers to teach in English – although all courses are taught in Russian to maintain quality standards and cohesion among students.

Likewise, other administrators said their universities created writing centres and workshops to assist faculty in publishing in high-ranking international journals.

Finally, top-performing universities hire international faculty and postdocs, but applications are subject to market forces. Yulia, head of international faculty support, said that previously the university saw more tenure-track applications, whereas in recent years postdoc positions have become more popular.

Not only have universities overtly recruited international talent, they have also sought out foreign-educated, English-speaking Russian faculty members. Academic recruitment to meet policy goals is not without challenges. As Tania, a department chair, said, it is difficult to hire qualified candidates because they must be a leading academic and teacher and be proficient in English.

Although it is easier for researchers and faculty to work on one-year or three-year ‘Highly Qualified Specialist’ residency visas, this can be a complicated process, which may include ad hoc requests or requirements by the state.

Another issue is retention. Sue, a postdoc at a research university, said that she is hesitant to stay without knowing Russian and would prefer employment elsewhere, but an increasingly constrained academic market offers few choices.

The internationalisation of higher education

We infer two simultaneous processes: First, that higher education is internationalising via the attraction, partnership and recruitment of foreign and foreign-trained researchers; and second, postdocs and faculty may cast a broader net when seeking academic collaboration and employment.

We conclude that academic labour circulation reifies the internationalisation of higher education. The key may be what a university and academic unit can provide.

For temporary researchers, access to equipment, resources and affiliation and publications with leading scholars at Russian universities are attractive. For long-term candidates, research funds and publishing bonuses, limited service for junior faculty members during their formative years, retention benefits and family or spousal support are important factors.

As our interviews suggest, national policy supports the goals of attracting global talent, but institutional strategic plans to promote academic mobility are decisive.

Institutions can also address recruitment difficulties by training future academics for an international career and providing them with what they need to be successful beyond their research and teaching (for example, English-language training and introducing them to international mentorship networks).

Finally, industry actively recruits candidates and opportunities outside of academia attract PhDs. For a higher education institution to maintain its competitive edge in an international market, it needs to be happy and productive to recruit and retain the best people. Now is the time for emerging destination countries to capitalise on the chance to market themselves to high-quality candidates.

What makes for successful internationalisation?

Our investigation has three implications. First, the analysis contributes to the theoretical understanding of how internationalisation policy and practice shape academic talent recruitment.

Second, using these recommendations, institutional programming – in Russia and other countries – can modify graduate training, recruitment and hiring to be more effective in an increasingly international environment.

Lastly, in terms of policy-making at the local and national levels around the world, actions should reflect goals to attract and retain skilled professionals, by, for example standardising immigration procedures.

In sum, opportunities that attract research talent and cohesive institutional and national policies that facilitate modernised recruitment processes reinforce internationalisation efforts.

Karin AC Johnson is a PhD candidate at the University of California Riverside, United States. Email: kjohn033@ucr.edu. This article was first published in the current edition of Higher Education in Russia and Beyond.