International joint educational programmes as a tool for internationalisation of higher education

Introduction: the article analyses the role of joint educational programmes in higher education as a tool of internationalisation in the broader context of contemporary development trends. Special attention is paid to international / transversal generic competences and to the importance of their fostering to ensure employability of university graduates. Development and implementation of these programmes, as well as problems that have to be addressed to ensure their success are given a thorough account. The paper describes best practices in the implementation of such programmes run at Lobachevsky University of Nizhniy Novgorod. Materials and Methods: general scientific methods of cognition are used to examine the research object, namely analysis, comparison and generalisation. The practical experience of Lobachevskiy University is analysed in implementing various joint educational programmes together with European universities, namely: full-time undergraduate and graduate programmes run at two universities; bachelor's degree and specialist's degree programmes run at LNNSU with parallel distance learning in European universities; the programme to obtain two degrees at the third level - Kandidat nauk degree and Ph.D. Results: the authors make a general conclusion that the development of joint educational programmes is the most effective way to create a unified European Higher Education Area, an important tool for implementing the principles of the Bologna process. It is proven that the general target of joint educational programmes is to improve the competitiveness of European education and ensure its high quality. Discussion and Conclusions: the authors substantiate the general criteria for assessing the efficiency of joint educational programmes, such as: the modular structure of the programme and the necessity to build on the achievement of learning outcomes; maintenance of a high level of quality education in the framework of a joint programme; use of methods of student-centered learning.