UrFU among Regional Russian Universities: From Low-Performing to Visibility . 155

4. The Institutional Context

4.6 UrFU among Regional Russian Universities: From Low-Performing to Visibility . 155

be explained, among other things, by the fact that, at the beginning of the program, the percentage of international faculty members was much lower (0.3%) compared to that of international students (2.4%).

As it has been shown, UrFU has significantly increased the indicators of

internationalization which contribute to global university rankings and has fundamentally changed its strategy for the development of internationalization and international positioning.

The change of strategy only came into action after adopting the benchmarks of Asian and European universities, as well as through organizational change and restructuring. The chosen strategy led to the increase of indicators of internationalization and improved UrFU’s positions in the world university rankings, although it did not lead to the achievement of the initial goals of Project 5-100. The following section compares UrFU’s development during Project 5-100 with other regional universities in Russia which participated in the excellence initiative.

4.6 UrFU among Regional Russian Universities: From Low-Performing to Visibility

Figure 4

Percentage of International Students in Undergraduate and Master’s Programs

Note. The data are from Information analysis data on the results of monitoring activities of educational organizations of higher education by Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, 2022, (https://monitoring.miccedu.ru/?m=vpo).

As Figure 4 illustrates, UrFU started recruiting a limited number of international students and then, over the years, managed to rank fourth out of 12 institutions by the end of Project 5-100, steadily increasing its recruiting. The same same trend applies to growth of postgraduate studies (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Percentage of International Students in Postgraduate Programs

In terms of absolute values, UrFU ranked second for number of international students (4219 in 2020), only preceded by Kazan Federal University (6685 international students in 2020 respectively). UrFU was also in the first tertile of regional 5-100 participants in terms of percentage of international faculty members, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

Percentage of International Faculty Members in 2020

Finally, UrFU managed to achieve a similar position (ranking fourth) among the regional 5-100 universities in terms of publications in Scopus and Web of Science. Figure 7 illustrates the ranking of universities by number of publications in Scopus per 100 faculty members in 2020 and the dynamics of the indicator.

0,88 1,07

1,28 1,79

2,39 2,71

3,29 3,78

4,96 6

8,01 8,86

0 2 4 6 8 10

Siberian Federal University Novosibirsk State University Far Eastern Federal University Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University Lobachevsky University Samara University Kazan Federal University University of Tyumen Ural Federal University Tomsk State University South Ural State University Tomsk Polytechnic University

Figure 7

Number of Publications in Scopus per 100 Faculty Members

The fourth position among regional 5-100 universities was achieved by UrFU in terms of publications indexed in Web of Science, another target database (Figure 8).

Figure 8

Number of Publications in Web of Science Core Collection per 100 Faculty Members

However, as figures 7 and 8 illustrate, the distribution of numbers of publications was uneven. The absolute leader in terms of publications performance was Novosibirsk State University, followed by two other regional universities with outstanding results: Tomsk State University and Tomsk State Polytechnical University. The performance of the other

institutions, including UrFU, was significantly behind these three.

As shown in this section, the first three institutions were far ahead of the other regional 5-100 universities in terms of achieved KPIs, and, thus, the positioning of all other institutions could not be based on their leadership in the listed indicators of

internationalization. Excellent performance in specific areas allowed the leading institutions

in Russian regions to clearly distinguish their positioning. In example, the motto of Novosibirsk State University is “the real science” (Novosibirsk State University, 2022).

However, this was not the case for UrFU. The studied institution made significant progress during Project 5-100 and achieved stable positions in numbers of international students, faculty and research performance, but did not achieve a leading position in any of these internationalization dimensions.

The 5-100 regional universities had the goals, driven by Project 5-100, but they had to find their own way of achieving those goals. The institutions had to find out what

internationalization meant in the given circumstances and which strategies of

internationalization they would choose on the way to it. The following sections illustrate what strategies of internationalization were chosen by UrFU and how internationalization was repositioned by UrFU leadership and faculty members during Project 5-100 in relation to rationales, research and educational strategies, and international services.

4.7 Rationales for Internationalization: Prestige for Leadership, Economic Reasons for Middle Managers

As indicated in section 3.4.4, RPE is usually used to determine rationales of

internationalization in higher education institutions and can be employed together with other instruments of strategy development or reviewing (Lewis, 2007). In the current study, RPE contributes, together with thematic analysis of interviews (described in section 4.8) to addressing the second research question on repositioning of internationalization. All interviews and RPE at institutional level were held during the last stage of Project 5-100 in 2019. The list of institution participants included three vice-rectors (hereafter referred as university leadership) and six heads of international offices (hereafter referred as middle management), whose functions are detailed in section 3.6.4.

As a result of the RPE, university leadership indicated prestige and academic reasons as the main rationales for internationalization, as shown in Figure 9. On the other hand, UrFU middle managers indicated the economic rationale as the most representative current

university priority. On the contrary, university top managers assigned the least number of points to it.

Figure 9

Current Balance of Rationales at UrFU

A vice-rector described his choice and equated prestige to rankings:

The second, third and fourth rationales maintain the first one [prestige, my note]. On the contrary, if we get higher positions in the ranking, it will affect the three

remaining rationales. Students will come and pay for their studies; we will cooperate more in the research area internationally. All the rationales are connected. (VR-1)

A middle manager advanced an opposite opinion:

5,3 5,3

4,3 5,0

4,8 5,0

6,8

3,4

0,0 1,0 2,0 3,0 4,0 5,0 6,0 7,0 8,0

Prestige rationale

Academic rationale

Economic rationale

Social rationale

UrFU leadership Middle management

I believe that everything is done to receive funding. We constantly achieve indicators in order to get into the first group2. The first group will provide a certain amount of funding, and so on. We pay salaries claimed by foreigners with the additional funding (from Project 5-100, my note), with a very few exceptions. (IOM-5)

Another middle manager explained that economic reasons prevailed over all others:

“According to the roadmap, we have indicators, we all work on indicators. Project 5-100 finances the university if certain targets are met. Internationalization indicators are among the ones that influence the distribution of funding between the three groups”. (IOM-6) The respondents completed the exercise by assessing the desired balance of rationales according to their points of view that is illustrated in Figure 10.

Figure 10

Desired Balance of Rationales at UrFU

2 All universities, which participated in Project 5-100, were divided into three groups. The universities which showed the highest performance were assigned to the so-called first group and received the largest amount of funding; the universities with the lower performance were classified into the third group and received an inferior amount of funding. Funds were allocated annually on the basis of university performance.

6,0

4,7 4,7 4,7

4,9 5,4

4,2

5,4

0,0 1,0 2,0 3,0 4,0 5,0 6,0 7,0

Prestige rationale

Academic rationale

Economic rationale

Social rationale

UrFU leadership Middle management

The vice-rectors nominated prestige as the leading rationale and gave equal scores to all other rationales. Crucially, their assessment did not vary from the current balance

estimation. In contrast, middle managers provided a different opinion from their previous estimation and assigned the smallest number of points to the economic rationale. Only one out of six middle managers had a contrasting opinion: the study participant was confident that UrFU should pay more attention to its commercial activities. Moreover, as opposed to their perception of current priorities, the middle managers indicated the social reason as the key rational along with the academic one:

The priority for our university should be maintenance of the student environment, making it comfortable, so that everything is hospitable and structured. According to the reviews of our students, this is the top priority. It’s not even the quality of education that is most appreciated, but the socio-cultural aspects³. The city, the infrastructure within the university, interaction between students, and so on.

Therefore, I put this in the most important position. (IOM-2)

It is important to note that this opinion reflected a first-hand experience of a middle manager. The institution does not prioritize tasks of developing a socio-cultural environment over the quality of education in its policy of social responsibility (Ural Federal University, 2014) and UrFU Code of Ethics (Ural Federal University, 2013a).

To summarize, two conclusions arose from the section. First, perception of the current rationales of internationalization was rather different across the university leadership (vice-rectors) and the middle management (managers of international services). The former

3 In the interview context, this and the following sentence relate to the perceptions of students and how they were understood by the university manager.

believed that the effort to achieve prestige was a generator of internationalization development since it could influence the growth of all the other dimensions: academic, economic, social. The latter were sure that UrFU was mostly driven by economic rationales.

The current balance of rationales was controversial as some rationales had a higher weight while others received minimum scores. The analysis of the desired situation showed that the vision of the current balance of rationales of the university leadership was matching their vision of the desired situation, whereas the same cannot be said about the middle managers’

perception. The latter indicated that the economic rationale should be the least important priority in an “ideal world” and social rationales together with academic ones should be the top priority.

4.8 Strategies and Repositioning of Internationalization: Thematic Analysis of

Nel documento A STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF THE RUSSIAN EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE PROJECT 5-100 ON INTERNATIONALIZATION OF URAL FEDERAL UNIVERSITY AND THREE OF ITS ACADEMIC UNITS: RATIONALES, STRATEGIES AND SERVICES (pagine 155-165)