The participants of the individual national project Kredo, funded from European funds, were looking for strategies that would be recommended to Czech universities and the Ministry of Education. Among other things, to increase the relatively small number of foreign students currently studying in the Czech Republic.
“For us, within the framework of the project, which was conducted over two years, internationalization and the importance of international relations for Czech universities became the main task,” said Kredo project expert Dagmar Škodová-Parmová in an interview with Radio Prague. “Internationalization is of fundamental importance for international cooperation in research and innovation, so creating an appropriate international platform is a necessity.”
What is the current state of affairs in the country regarding foreign students? In Czech universities, there is an increase in the degree of internationalization every year, resulting from the growing number of foreign students. Currently, the share of foreign students is 9-10% of the total. Half of them came from Slovakia, which is explained by the lack of a language barrier between Czechs and Slovaks. A significant part of the foreign student body consists of citizens from Slavic countries, because it is easier for them to learn Czech, followed by groups of students from European countries and those from other continents.
“Russian-speakers are the second largest group of foreign students,” notes Dagmar Škodová-Parmová. “When accepting students into a university, we do not have the right to ask them about their nationality or, for example, whether they are bilingual. For instance, Ukrainians indicate only Ukrainian as their native language and do not declare knowledge of Russian. Nevertheless, we assume that people from post-Soviet republics know Russian, which should subsequently help them, without much difficulty, to also learn Czech in continuing education courses. This, in turn, is of great importance for those who want to study within the free – under current legislation – programs where instruction is in Czech.
A major advantage of Russian-speaking students, as well as students from other Slavic countries, according to Dagmar Škodová-Parmová, is that they do not focus exclusively on the humanities, but also enroll, for example, in medical faculties or technical universities, thereby not copying the trends of Czech preferences in choosing higher education institutions. Trends, as experts emphasize, that are quite regrettable.
“Many of the mentioned students choose economics or sociology, and also enroll in law faculties,” notes the expert. “Thus, foreigners make up for the lack of Czech students in some professions. The number of those who fail to graduate from technical universities – we call this phenomenon 'drop-out' – is higher than students who do not complete courses in other types of universities, since the need to overcome the language barrier is compounded by the difficulties of some specializations. Nevertheless, we observe the same picture among Czech students as well.”
At the conference dedicated to the project's outcomes, there was also talk about the need to increase opportunities for Czech students to participate in internships abroad, as well as the economic potential that foreign students represent for the Czech Republic.