Internationalization in Russian universities during the pandemic of COVID‐19: Lessons for succeeding in the new reality

Abstract

The pandemic of COVID‐19 became a resilience test for internationalization in Russia and emphasized many systemic trends, both promising and concerning. The turbulence and instability during the pandemic initiated the growth of internationalization activities at the institutional level in two directions: first, it increased attention to the quality of work with current international students, including student support, adaptation issues, student engagement, and second, due to the risks in student enrolment, it brought universities to rethink their internationalization instruments and strategies for work with international applicants and future students. Indeed, the ongoing changes in global education call for reconsideration of the priorities and methods of internationalization: new forms of internationalization become widespread practices, new instruments are necessary for student recruitment, and new push and pull factors come into play. While internationalization of education in Russia during the pandemic was addressed at the national level to a degree, the universities carried out the key activities and had to come up with solutions “in the field”. The paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of Russia's transition through the pandemic and tackle the changes at the university level, based on a comparison of data of the survey of international departments of Russian universities conducted in 2020 and the survey of 2021, supported by semi‐structured interviews. The research offers insights on the capacity for change and resilience in Russian universities within the internationalization domain and can help to develop data‐driven approaches for improvement of organizational capacity of universities.