ATTRACTING FOREIGN STUDENTS TO RUSSIAN UNIVERSITIES: THE KEY IN SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OUTSIDE HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

Universities still struggle with the ebbs and flows consisting of attracting, retaining and understanding foreign students. Too much focus is put on opinions and statistics around foreign students, which a majority of universities pursue via surveys on their perception of the quality of teaching, their adaptation, or performance appraisal. An approach which is questionable from a sociological point of view, and can be described as a faux pas given that those opinions are taken in most cases out of their contexts and devoid of adequate methods to identify or analyze such opinions, which I argue are mostly influenced by factors outside higher education itself. Therefore, this article suggests the theory of Social Representations (SRs), and some theoretical suggestions to fill the gap related to investigations on foreign students.

Keywords

• social representations
• foreign students