Approaches to assessing the effectiveness of the export of educational services by universities in the cities - university centers of Russia

The export of education in Russia was officially proclaimed as a priority area of governmental policy in 2017. The subsequently adopted documents such as the project “Development of the export potential of the Russian education system”, the program “Priority 2030”, and the national project “Science and universities” confirm that the export of education remains an important governmental strategy, despite the changed geopolitical context. The export of education is considered in the works of scientists from Russia and other countries: they study in detail the economics of education export in various countries, adaptation of foreign students, methodological approaches, legal and visa systems of educational migration, etc. The aim of our work is to develop a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of the export of education by universities in the cities - university centers of Russia and test it on the materials of the Siberian Federal District. Despite a wide range of relevant publications that we arranged in six main groups, these aspects have not been the subject of scientific analysis. We have developed our own system of indicators and indices (a comprehensive indicator of the effectiveness of the export activities of universities in the cities - university centers, calculated on the basis of indices of the educational and research potential of universities’ export activity). The methodology has been tested on the indicators for 115 universities and 30 cities - university centers of the Siberian Federal District. We have revealed that the data are scattered: out of 29 cities where foreign students study, only Tomsk is in the group of cities with high potential for educational and research export activities. The majority of the cities - university centers (22) belong to group 3 - with low potential for educational and research export activities. Our research makes it possible to comprehensively assess the effectiveness of the export of educational services by universities and cities - university centers in each group and set out the priorities for the development of universities; and also identify cities that best meet the needs of the country to implement the export of education.