OGANESYAN Ani A.

Modern technologies create new opportunities for higher education and lifelong learning. Electronic technologies are changing its character: institutions of higher education all over the world are forced to respond to the growing demand for online education in a distance format (both at the level of basic and additional programs). Online universities are emerging in the world; their model is recognized as one of the five promising Russian education export projects. In Russia, online education has been developing rapidly since 2013. The government of the Russian Federation has adopted a number of projects aimed at improving it, especially in higher education. Thus, since 2017, there is a project ‘Development of the export potential of the Russian education system', which aims to export Russian educational programs to the international market (including in digital format). The authors studied the information base of Russian universities that implement online education in foreign languages, developed criteria for assessing the created products, their success, as well as the main strategies for promoting online courses in foreign languages with the help of infrastructure, regulatory, information, organizational and marketing tools. The paper compares the international experience in the development of MOOCs, the infrastructure of their promotion, and the Russian practice of creating online courses (programs) in foreign languages. Another task was to develop a strategy to promote Russian MOOCs. Finally, on the basis of the original model, the relationship between online programs and the University rating is traced. This study continues the discussion on higher education reforms and opportunities for its export.

The article analyzes and evaluates the tools for increasing the competitiveness of European universities on the basis of the ‘Initiatives of University Excellence (IDEX)' strategies implemented in the course of higher education and science reforms. At the same time, the main question of the research - why, in some countries, the reforms that began in the early 2000s, have been successful and continue to develop successfully, while in others their performance is significantly lower - presents both theoretical and practical interest. Why do some countries, assessing the medium-term and long-term prospects for reforms, continue their policy of increasing the competitiveness of science and university education, promote new ‘excellence initiatives', improving tools, tightening demands and assessing the efficiency of the results achieved, and other countries, with significant resources and efforts, have much more modest results? Our joint research is devoted to these questions and it's related to the evaluation of the efficiency of both the reforms altogether and of each of their tools individually.

The role of universities in terms of internationalization of education and growing demand for professionals who meet the requirements of the new digital and innovation economy is the key one. Educational institutions of higher education should meet both global development criteria and local goals depending on the needs of specific territories. In this regard, new forms of interaction between higher education institutions at the international level, university networks are emerging and developing. The article presents the results of research and systematization of available information on international university networks. 33 international networks of universities, including 13 associations, 12 networks, 8 consortiums selected according to the certain requirements were accumulated, reviewed and analyzed; those requirements comprise international character, functioning for at least 2 years, existence of cooperation agreements between the network structures, presence of more than 4 structures. To collect information the author used the data from the websites of international networks of universities, annual reports, articles, texts of agreements with partners and other data. The analysis of networks was carried out according to various criteria: the geographical and territorial distribution of network universities and various forms of networking, types of interaction between partner universities and the most popular projects being implemented, the specifics of implementing double diploma programs and network programs between partners. The conclusions about the effectiveness of university networks are presented. The existing problems and prospects of development are defined. Among the issues the author includes the existing system of managing network universities, as well as the willingness to provide resources to partners for the realization of common goals. One of the most important condition for implementing the network interaction is the availability of technological information and communication platform the presence