ATLAS INFORMATION SYSTEM “FOREIGN STUDENTS IN RUSSIA”

Abstract

Educational immigration is a specific category of migration, the role of which has been constantly growing in recent decades both in Russia and all over the world. In our country, due to the growing demographic crisis in most regions, educational immigration can become a way to mitigate unfavorable demographic processes. In this regard, it is important to understand the real geography of the immigration educational flow at various spatial levels. This specific category of migrations has its own spatial patterns, so it is necessary to realize an integrated approach to the study of student immigration, which allows to consolidate a wide set of statistical data from various sources of information, at various spatial levels, all over the world in general and in specific universities, conducting spatial analysis, modeling and visualizing the processes under study, atlas information systems allow to implement this request (AIS). The study presents the stages of preparation of the AIS “Foreign Students in Russia” including the development of the structure, the choice of software, the preparation of a spatial database, the choice of mapping methods, the development of a set of cartographic and visual models, the integration of the system into the web environment. The AIS implements the principle of multi-scale and it is prepared at 4 spatial levels: “Global”, reflecting the position of Russia in the world market of educational services; “Country”, containing indicators for Russia as a whole; “Regional”, which reflects the regional characteristics of student immigration; “Local”, which analyzes the nature of student immigration in universities of cities. Each section contains relevant materials based on student immigration, which allows to analyze the spatial features of students’ immigration processes in Russia and the capabilities of AIS as a visualization tool significantly increase the level of analytics and managerial decision-making if we consider the immigration policy not only of regions but also of universities in general.