The article considers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the flows of foreign students including a reduction in the scale of international academic migration and deterioration of the situation of foreign students in the countries of admission. The work reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the situation of foreign students; many of them, having left for their countries, are currently unable to return to their place of study, and those students who have not returned to their homeland do not see prospects for staying in the countries of education for various reasons. The global educational services market has been seriously disrupted as a result of the pandemic. The paper notes that the migration policy of countries receiving international educational migrants is being transformed in the direction of increasing restrictions: study visas are not issued, visas are revoked from citizens of some states, and the procedure for issuing visas and residence permits is becoming more complicated. The article states that a new stage is coming in the development and regulation of international educational migration which may lead to the restructuring of the world market of educational services. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is diversification of the directions of international educational migration. We reveal that the UK and Canada have taken advantage of the pandemic situation and increased the volume of export services in higher education. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia has also managed to increase the admission of foreign students in 2020 through the liberalization of the admission procedure: online submission of documents, online entrance tests, postponement of the provision of original documents, etc. In combination with the factor of low tuition and accommodation costs, the reformatting of the global educational services market gives Russia a good chance of reaching a new level of attracting foreign students including at the expense of Asian countries (China, Vietnam, etc.)
Keywords
migration policy, human capital, educational migration, digitalization of education, COVID-19 pandemic, foreign students, education export, online migration