Trends of Higher Education Evolution in the Multiethnic Environment of Mining Regions

Abstract

Internationalization of higher education as a national strategy has resulted in intensive growth of the number of international students in the regional universities. A current multiethnic educational environment requires defining the trends of the regional higher education evolution aimed at training both students and educators for productive and efficient cross-cultural interaction hence enhancing the quality of higher education. The analysis of the researches devoted to sustainable development of Kuzbass (West Siberia, Russia), national and international normative legal documents regulating the implementation of multicultural education, and the experience in training international students at the flagship university of Kuzbass – Kemerovo State University – has been conducted. As a result, the following trends of the multiethnic higher education evolution have been defined: the purposeful organization of multiethnic educational environment; the shaping of tolerance to multiethnic environment in both students and teaching staff; the training of university teaching staff for professional activity in multiethnic environment, particularly, for designing the content of multicultural education along with applying modern interactive educational technologies. The defined trends promote higher quality of education and regional human capital as indispensable provision for sustainable development of the coal mining region Kuzbass.