Developing Mechanisms for Educational Migrants' Adaptation: Problems and Solutions (On the Example of Tomsk Universities)

The aim of this research is to generalize the experience of Tomsk universities in adapting educational migrants to the new educational and sociocultural environment and present recommendations for improving the quality of this process. For Tomsk Oblast, the study is relevant in connection with the implementation of the tasks of the national project "Education" and the formation of an agglomeration of Tomsk universities and research institutes into a "Big University" in order to activate the innovation environment. To determine the specifics and effectiveness of adaptation technologies in relation to international students in Tomsk universities, a two-stage study was conducted. The first stage was aimed at the monitoring and critical analysis of existing programs for the adaptation of educational migrants in Tomsk state universities. The main directions of Tomsk universities' work are determined: organizational support and support of international students in the university space, language training of international students, primary adaptation of international students in the city, sociocultural adaptation of international students. The purpose of the second stage was to identify the problems and features of working with educational migrants in universities by conducting semi-structured interviews with university academic staff and employees who have direct experience of working with international students. As a result, the authors have proposed ways to optimize the training of educational migrants in Tomsk universities, such as: increasing the entrance requirements to universities, organizing additional courses in Russian and English with mandatory testing of the level of knowledge of the language before starting training, and others. In general, the results of the study made it possible to formulate a number of recommendations for three main groups: educational, sociocultural, and psychological. An effective organization of international students' adaptation in the region requires: developing a unified model of pedagogical support for educational migrants, taking into account their national specifics; organizing training and professional development of university academic staff in order to form the necessary professional competencies to optimize teaching in various national groups; including cultural, country-specific and ethnographic disciplines in the training programs of international students; developing mechanisms aimed at creating positive images of Russian culture; improving mentoring and curating services for international students; increasing the quality of infrastructure and support services for international students in universities and the region, and others. The findings and recommendations can be taken into account when developing adaptation programs for educational migrants in the region.

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