The role of distance learning in the transformation processes of national higher education systems

The emergence and active spread of distance learning has fundamentally changed national higher education systems around the world, making them more open and convenient, which is especially important now during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, national higher education systems face certain challenges associated with the spread of distance and mobile learning technologies. This paper shows the role of distance learning and mobile learning technologies in the transformational changes of higher education systems, analyzes the possibilities and prospects for the development of these technologies, taking into account the growing trends of digitalization of modern society. The empirical material for writing this work was the data of the Google search engine, which made it possible to analyze the frequency of search queries for the phrase “distance learning” and its equivalent in Russian, which made it possible to draw conclusions about the dynamics of user interest in the problem under consideration.