FACULTY AND STUDENTS AS PARTICIPANTS OF INTERNATIONALIZATION

Peter Osipov

Julia Ziyatdinova

Russian universities are going globally, and internationalization is becoming their main strategy integrating intercultural dimension into all levels of university activities. Despite the global processes the position of Russia and its universities in the world educational space does not satisfy the existing demands, engineering education being among the priorities for going globally. One of the reasons to explain this gap between the demands and the current situation is the attitude of the educational process participants, namely, students and faculty, towards internationalization. This opinion of the authors is supported by the results of a special survey with participation of over 1,000 students and over 300 faculty members of Kazan National Research Technological University as one of the leading Russian engineering universities. The survey aimed at showing the attitude of the faculty and students to internationalization through questions related to foreign language command, participation in international events, cooperation with international universities, and etc. The paper gives a detailed analysis of the survey results showing that the general attitude to internationalization is positive while there is a number of obstacles and barriers, including foreign language level, and difference in infrastructure leading to poor representation of the research results in the global community. The results of the university internationalization showed their direct dependence on the participation of students and faculty in different initiatives, and the need for their self-directed development towards international education.