Internationalization of higher education: motives, factors and problems (based on the results of sociological research)

Abstract

The article presents the results of two sociological studies conducted in order to study the motivation for obtaining higher education and the factors of choosing a university by foreign students, identifying problems and developing recommendations for their solution. It was revealed that foreign students generally value higher education, and that the motivational postulates of obtaining an education contain not only commercial goals, but also cultural ones. It has been established that Russian education is highly valued by foreign students in terms of quality, and that foreign students purposefully seek to obtain Russian education. It was determined that Russia is a financially attractive country for foreign students, including attractive in obtaining jobs. The study showed the high importance of the university website and social networks for making a decision on obtaining an education at this university. The results of the study showed that the level of training in higher educational institutions of the city meets the requirements and meets the needs of foreign students as much as possible. At the same time, a number of problems related to teaching foreign students were identified: language problems; learning problems; communication problems; sociocultural and social problems, for the solution of which a number of recommendations are proposed in the article.