Impact of the Pandemic on the Learning Process of Foreign Students Studying in Russia and Prospects for Educational Migration

Globalization in the field of science and education has intensified the so-called student migration. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, universities have been forced to quickly reorganize their educational activities with the help of distance learning technologies. The article is aimed at identifying the COVID-19 impact on student migration and the development of distance learning. The article presents a brief review of the current state of student migration all over the world and identifies the approaches to the concept of student migration, as well as its advantages and disadvantages for all participants in the educational process. In the course of the study authors used several general scientific and special methods: comparison and generalization, applied in the process of analysing researchers’ views, the abstract logical method applied in the process of formulating research conclusions. The main method of the research was expert survey. Based on an expert survey, the authors identify the key aspects of the COVID-19 impact on student migration, the conditions necessary for improving the quality of distance learning services for foreign students at the university level, and the ways of enhancing the cognitive activity of foreign students during distance learning in the context of the pandemic. In the conclusions, the author determines that COVID-19 leads to serious structural changes in higher education institutions due to the development and spread of new learning technologies, as well as changes in world educational migration.