In the nearest future high school of Russia will have to solve quite a complicated problem: no less than five Russian universities must qualify for top one hundred of leading universities all over the world according to the rating of QS World University Rankings [1]. A poor level of competitiveness at world market of the most domestic organizations of higher (tertiary) education is mostly defined by discrepancy between the level of graduates and challenges of globalization. Methodical, pedagogic, and other components of higher education often obtain over-national features as a result of spontaneous and unsystematic internationalization.
Modern definition of the idea “globalization” in application to activity of educational organizations implies parallel existence of two types of processes – internal and external (internationalization at home) internationalization [Jade Knight]. External internationalization that is being studied more closely in Russian high school, is usually represented by mobility of students, tutors, projects, educational programmes and services. External internationalization that, according to J. Knight, represents a complex of measures that provide for development of intercultural communication and international understanding skills among students, embraces almost all aspects of educational organizations’ activity, from defining educational plans and programmes to interacting with local cultural societies and various ethnical groups. From our point of view, preparation for a successful introduction of Russian high school into the world market should start with internal internationalization. Inviting foreign tutors and student to an educational institution with unclear internationalization goals and lack of operational processes and microclimate, adapted to challenges of globalization, can lead (and does!) to degradation of an organization’s image and decrease in education quality.
Studying educational services as a commodity defines a necessity to apply marketing principles to process of high school internationalization. The most appropriate model for the area of tertiary education is that of “serving in action” by P. Eiglier and E. Langeard that contains three basic elements – consumers (students), process of providing a service (education), and organization that provides services (educational institution). According to the marketing model “serving in action”, an environment that favours for receiving knowledge and competences, implies proving educational services by a qualified and motivated “communicative personnel” that contributes greatly to increase in education quality.
A broad specter of organizational-managing, methodical, educational, upbringing, and scientific nature should be solved within the frames of internal internationalization. Chancellor of Russian university of international friendship in which number of foreigners forms more than 1/3, mentions a list of 29 problems [3], most of which can’t be solved without a skillful introduction of marketing concepts into activity of universities. A strategic goal of internal marketing within a university is to create conditions that provide for development of competitive personnel within an institution. In this case methods of all comprehensive motivation and internal personnel training become basic tools. The latter method deserves our special attention. Most of Russian high school tutors haven’t had an experience of teaching their subject in a foreign language yet and usually are completely unprepared to carrying out their pedagogic functions in terms of cross-cultural communications in both psychological and methodical sense. At the same time, without trained professor-tutor and training-assisting personnel it is impossible to solve such problems as, for example, realization of educational process within international groups or implementation of modern (including interactive) methods of using global informational systems. Therefore, internationalizing activity of an educational organization of tertiary education must begin with development of new inter-firm standards of professor staff, and the system of inter-firm personnel training. However, placing new requirements before the personnel, university leaders must reveal and improve level of employee’s satisfaction with their work at the same time. Definition of an optimal correlation between activity types and motivational potential is possible with toolset of internal marketing, introduction of which usually starts with figuring out subjective opinions, preferences, and settings of employees. It can be achieved through an iterative procedure, result of which is formation of work attributes’ positioning map, based upon matrix “significance-realization”. Specific features of university tutor’s work, emergence of new informational technologies, complexity of organization goals (educational, upbringing, and scientific) require revising all parameters of their activity. Trade union organizations of educational institutions could take responsibility for forming such list according to selective study of opinions among professor and tutor personnel.
The work is submitted to the International Scientific Conference «Problems of education quality», Indonesia (Bali), February, 17–25, 2015, came to the editorial office оn 19.01.2015.