Features of modern international educational immigration in Russian regions

In the context of internationalization of the educational environment and the expansion of international educational migration fl ows, the importance of conducting research and scientifi c understanding of the features of these processes increases not only in the world as a whole and in macroregions, but also on the territory of different localities of certain states. However, most of the works of both Russian and foreign scholars in the fi eld of educational migration have been conducted at the global or country level, while insuffi cient attention is paid to the analysis of regional features of educational migration. Therefore, the aim of the study, the results of which are presented in the article, is to assess the volume of modern international educational immigration in the regions of the Russian Federation. As an array of statistical data, we used information and analytical materials based on the results of monitoring the activities of universities of the Russian Federation, conducted by the Main Information and Computing Center of MI REA - Russian Technological University in 2022, as well as indicators of offi cial statistics of Rosstat and the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia. We revealed that the main share of foreign nationals studying in 2021 on Bachelor’s, Specialist’s and Master’s degree programs preferred to receive higher education in regional higher education institutions of Russia. While the universities of the Central and Northwestern Federal Districts stood out in terms of the number of foreign students, regional universities of other federal districts were leading in terms of the share of foreigners in the total number of students. Although the Central Federal District is still the leader in terms of attracting foreign citizens to universities and increasing the share of foreign students in the total student population, the attractiveness of university systems in other federal districts for foreigners is constantly growing. The practical signifi cance of the research lies in the possibility of using the results obtained by the academic community and authorities of all levels in assessing the impact of educational immigration on the socio-economic development of Russian regions and working out measures to stimulate the attraction of foreign citizens to regional universities of the country.