39 Universities United in an Educational Export Consortium

KFU joined the inaugural meeting in Moscow on August 14th.

The University was represented by Director of the International Office Andrey Krylov at the talks. Vice-Rector for Education Dmitry Tayursky will be KFU’s permanent representative in the organization. He will be a member of one the three committees – the legal committee.

An agreement between the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia and participating institutions and a roadmap for 2018 - 2025 will be ready by November 1st. Director Krylov explained, “The main objective is to export and internationalize Russian education. During the reform period Russia lost its leading positions in global educational export. It used to be a leader with the USA and the UK. Now we have such new leaders as European Union, Australia, and East Asia”.

There are some problems in advancing abroad that need to be tackled. In particular, Russia is represented by single universities, not as a country, at international fairs. Only Project 5-100 universities have moved to be making joint appearances.

Kazan University will have about 5,200 international students in 2017/2018. The number should grow further after joining the consortium. It’s worth noting that a yearly fee for international students at KFU is 3 – 7 thousand USD. That’s significantly cheaper than in such markets as the USA, the UK, or European Union. Naturally, accommodation fees and general expenses are also much lower in Kazan.

The project aims to increase the number of international students in Russia to 710 thousand in 2025 (there are 220 thousand in 2017). International online education enrollees should grow in number from 1.1 million to 3.5 million. The planned educational export revenue for 2025 is 373 billion rubles, more than a five-fold increase from the current 70 billion rubles. According to the International Trade Center data, the leading educational export markets today are the USA, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Italy, with the latter showing approximately the same revenue as Russia.