Challenges of international cooperation: reflections on the conference of the Russian Association of Higher Education Researchers

During the IV. Annual International Conference of the Russian Association of Higher Education Researchers, one particular concern still kept coming back to many of the (particularly Russian) participants: how to get into the top 100 in the global university rankings? An increasing internationalization of higher education is considered one of the conditions and means of reaching this goal. This article reflects upon some of the challenges that the Russian academic community is facing in order to fulfil this process of increasing international cooperation: the institutional background and large degree of uncertainty of the Russian system of higher education, the dominant academic culture among Russia’s professorial class, a different approach towards historical research, the absolute dominance of the English language in the international academic world, and finally the absolute need to fine-tune the bibliometric systems in use in the different countries to one another