VERNACULAR AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN HIGHER EDUCATION AS DRIVING TOOLS FOR INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

The paper explores the current state of affairs in the area of higher education at the age of multilingual societies development and globalization. The authors acknowledge that English has become the major medium of instruction. The paper analyzes internationally oriented universities' strategies and practices regarding the language policy issues. The paper argues that it is necessary to carefully combine mother tongue-based, bilingual and multilingual approaches to university -based instruction, research and management to enhance education quality and HEI international profile, thus fostering university academic excellence. The research methodology was based on qualitative analysis and included relevant literature review, study of international universities experience, data on Russian Universities that have been selected for the nationwide academic excellence project. The research findings and discussion section of the paper explores the above mentioned universities' educational policies, areas and tools of their implementation, and further attempts to outline the research findings with regard to the prior research contexts with the view to map the above findings within current international landscape of higher education. The paper ends up with drafting recommendations on language policies of a multilingual higher education in the 21st century.