Legal regulation of internationalization in Russian public institutes of higher education: a case of Volgograd Institute of Management

Introduction: Russian Public higher education system is dynamically changing due to gradual integration into the global educational market. The authors trace the adaptation of public higher educational institutions to modern conditions, study a real case of the Volgograd Institute of Management, branch of RANEPA specializing in public policy and business administration, its trends and issues in the internationalization process related to legal status of a branch of a public institution; suggest a series of measures to optimize its academic mobility trends. The purpose of the study is to determine the actual trends of the international activities of government funded organizations taking into account the current trends in the public reform of higher education in Russia and limitations arising from its legal status of a branch. Techniques: such methods as case study, system, comparative legal and logical analyses were applied. Results: it is proved that the success of internationalization process in Russian higher education in academic, research and consulting areas largely depends on the factors of regional level, legal status of public institutions, available resources as well as on branch network structure. Conclusions: it was found that in order to overcome limitations in the process of internationalization government-funded educational institutions with a status of a branch should focus on internal internalization id est on creation of interdisciplinary pilot educational programs with foreign partners within the framework of short-term and medium-term academic mobility on the basis of individual international academic trajectories and the creation of courses in English and the program “Russian as a Foreign Language”.