Abstract
The chapter describes the content and value of the mobility capital, which is activated by Russian students in the field of the Arctic region education and research. The survey, held among the Northern Arctic Federal University (NArFU) students in 2014, examines the value that they place on an international educational experience, their preferences for study-abroad opportunities, their perceptions of and attitudes toward the mobility capital (competences, skills, and knowledges), valuable at the Arctic region international cooperation field. The study tests the hypothesis, that the Russian student mobility capital (represented by NArFU sample) demonstrates specific combination of variables: the motivation for personal mobility experience gaining, incorporation to the university structured (and provided by the institutional organizational efforts) mobility patterns, quantity and quality of the skills, facilitating mobility and the students’ self-esteem as “mobile individuals”. As a result, the international education mobility of the Russian students is interpreted as a number of resources (available at cultural, social, economic and symbolic contexts), in which the students invest, and which can be converted into one another to maximize the effectiveness of one’s mobility quantity and quality.
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Notes
- 1.
The two related projects funded by the European Framework Programs: REFLEX (Research into Employment and professional Flexibility) and HEGESCO (Higher Education as a Generator of Strategic Competences) present large-scale surveys among graduates from higher education. The REFLEX project was carried out in 2005 in fourteen countries (Austria, Belgium-Flanders, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom), surveying around 70,000 graduates, who got their degree in the academic year 1999/2000. A similar project, HEGESCO, was done in 2008 in five other European countries (Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovenian and Turkey), with a gross sample size of 30,000 graduates, finishing ISCED 5A programs in the academic year 2002/2003. The combination of these two data sources enables a cross-country comparison of 19 European countries, represented in the EU report in 2013 (Rodrigues 2013).
- 2.
British Academy-funded research concentrates on individual-level student motivations for pursuing degrees abroad. Based on more qualitative research, focused on UK students who study overseas, it presents them as the bearers of privilege and class reproduction (Waters and Brooks 2011).
- 3.
Several comparative analysis perspectives may be derived from national (USA) student outcomes surveys, focusing on international mobility activities (NSSE 2009; WNSLAE 2009; GLOSSARI 2010). The data generally confirm the Erasmus and other mobile students’ achievement profiles. However, it adds several new dimensions to the research design, methods and the key results, because it measures the learning outcomes and long-term impact of study abroad (other international learning experiences) using quantitative approaches and statistics analysis. The national studies are large in scale and encompass multiple institutions.
- 4.
Some studies of international exchanges among doctoral students and postdocs focus on mobility, examine postdocs as skilled migrants, or evaluate productivity of international exchanges and the impact on scientific careers (Nerad and Blumenfield 2011). Wiers-Jenssen describes personality traits and motivation of mobile students, who constitute a select group of more outgoing and having more initiative individuals (2008). In addition, there are surveys, detecting the employers’ opinions about mobile students, perceived as more proactive, adaptable and problem-solvers (Bracht et al. 2006).
- 5.
In addition, the large-scale survey among the Russian graduate, postgraduate students and young researches focused on the forms, mechanisms and motives of their incorporation to the context of world science cooperation. These studies stressed “external” (mainly economical and institutional) demands of the mobile respondents, not mentioning their “internal” (cultural background, family support, multicultural interests) resources as the mobility drivers. The studies also show that the Russian young researches became increasingly sensitive to rapid economic or social changes and they uproot themselves with greater ease. The trend to draw the line between traditional immigrants and the contemporary mobile individuals becomes visible in the studies of international mobility of Russian students and researches. However, most of the evidence in the field demonstrates organizational, institutional and normative factors, which facilitate or limit the Russian students’ mobile activities (Alekseev 2013).
- 6.
Findlay detects two general models of the international mobile students theorizations: “demand-side” (which try to explain the mobility by starting out from the students’ perspective) and “supply side” (which incorporate the role of recruiting agencies, universities, government institutions and policies in directing the flows of mobile students towards certain countries). “Demand-side” studies of the mobility motivation and outcomes use “simple behavioral models of the choices made by students” (Findlay 2011).
- 7.
The data about NArFU students’ international mobility is presented in the Northern Arctic Federal University annual reports. Data from 2014 is systemized in the NArFU report (Analiticheskaya spravka 2014).
- 8.
Full version of the survey results is presented in Russian language at the Final report to Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation (Soloviova 2015).
- 9.
The Chi-Square test carried out on the data was significant at the 0.05 level (p > 0.1) of significance.
- 10.
There is no significant difference between the groups (p > 0.1).
- 11.
There is no significant difference between the groups (p > 0.1).
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Soloviova, A. (2017). Russian Students’ Mobility Capital in the Field of University Internationalization. In: Sundet, M., Forstorp, PA., Örtenblad, A. (eds) Higher Education in the High North. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56832-4_12
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