Legal and cluster analyses of internationalization process in the Russian system of higher education

The paper is devoted to the analysis of modern dynamical processes in the national system of higher education. The aim of research is to analyze international transformations of the Russian higher education system. The research is vital because of the necessity of identification of the current processes of internationalization in the Russian higher education under the conditions of ambiguous interpretation and characteristics of ongoing transformations. Legal and cluster research methods are used in the paper. These methods allow conducting both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the state of the national system of higher education under the conditions of transformations. The analysis of international legal regulation allows developing a hypothesis about the lack of integration processes of the national system of higher education into the world educational space. The cluster analysis does not find out any tendency towards the unification of education system of different countries, which is a confirmation of the suggestion offered. Based on the conducted analysis, the current processes are described as the international harmonization of educational space. The basic characteristics of the specified process are defined.