Abstract:

With the development of the processes of globalization and the internationalization of the economy and business, a new goal has arisen before higher education: the training of professional staff who are able to work effectively in the changed conditions of the global market. The Rector of South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk) A.Shestakov understands clearly that Russian graduates should be competitive. Moreover, Russian universities should be competitive as well. As a result South Ural State University (SUSU) suggests using the multicultural environment of the university itself as a source of internal internationalization. Besides, in 2015 SUSU took part in the Project 5-100 which deals with the creation of a modern effective structure of the university, corresponding to world standards and leading scientific practices.

The author gives the overview of the changes connected with methods of teaching, publication activity, students’ mobility, foreign students, teachers’ mobility, curricular, system of bilingual education in South Ural State University. The author compares SUSU of the 2014 and SUSU of the 2016 to analyze how the Project 5-100 and internal internationalization influence the way the university works.

The present study applies traditional research methods of observation, comparing and data analysis. With the help of these methods the author reveals strong and weak points of the internal internationalization in the South Ural State University, tries to find the roots of the problems and suggests the possible ways to solve them. Speaking about strengths the author considers increasing number of publications in international journals, involvement of students in the process of changes and desire to take part in new projects, readiness of teachers to change their methods of teaching and implement the most successful world experience, growing number of foreign students who are eager to study at SUSU to get Master’s degree or to be involved in Postgraduate education. On the other hand, not all students and teachers understand clearly what internalization is, the level of the English language is not always sufficient to work in monolingual English environment and it is difficult for some students and teachers to work in rapidly changing situation. The author recommends to explain the staff the necessity of internationalization and needs of modern world in continuous lifelong learning.

The author assumes that South Ural State University is developing much faster than other big universities of Chelyabinsk due to the internationalization and that the speed of development will grow because of the advantages that internationalization gives to the university. Moreover, purposeful improvement of the work allows SUSU to provide the region with small innovative enterprises, modern engineering solutions and highly qualified specialists.

Keywords:

higher education, internationalization, Russia.