ACADEMIC MOBILITY FOR FUTURE PROFESSIONALS’ DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THEIR OWN EYES

Academic mobility is widely seen as an adequate response of higher education to the ongoing globalization processes, providing students, academics, researchers and administrators with multiple opportunities to develop beyond the institutional and even national limitations and use the opportunities provided by Higher Education 3.0 more effectively and efficiently. Academic mobility launched in Europe by the collective effort of the Bologna process ideologists, advocates and academics, has much surpassed their expectations involving the rest of the world in the process at an increasing speed. Yet, like it always happens with a major new project, the achieved results (in many cases really astonishing) need some improvement. The authors have made an attempt to research the problem of multimodality of academic mobility as a prominent social phenomenon, identifying its current challenges and opportunities and focusing their attention on PESTEL factors determining stakeholders’ attitudes and their role in developing the phenomenon in Europe and beyond.

The research methodology includes both quantitative and qualitative methods and is based upon systemic approach. Basing on the cases of three Finnish universities and three Russian Universities (with two of them situated in Moscow and the one – in a Russian province), the authors have analyzed the issues of academic mobility, which look most topical for three major stakeholders – students, their parents and University organizers of academic mobility projects. The authors are willing to share the results of their research and believe it can be used as a basis for wider surveys covering parts of Europe and then the whole of Europe and beyond.