Various Approaches to Financing Russian Higher Education Institutions Integrating into the Global Educational Environment

During the last twenty years Russian higher education system is the subject of the permanent transformation. The target of the reforms is to obtain high level of competitiveness as a key challenge for Russian higher education institutions. One of the directions for the solution of this task is the development of integration into the global educational community. Public and private higher education institutions have different opportunities for the formation of sustainable relationships with well-known world university centers. They use various financial resources for the investment into the improvement of their own competitiveness. Most public universities use intergovernmental agreements for the development of collaboration with foreign universities within the budget allocated by the Russian state. Private universities use another way of financing integration into the global educational environment. It is characterized by the inflow of money received from the local householders for the additional international training programs and a long-term financing of the founders and charities. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.