Over the last decade internationalisation priorities have been increasing the mobility of the students, improving the quality of study programmes, development of internationalisation centred management and strengthening of research cooperation. The study evaluates whether the strategy for years 2006-2015 is context relevant and achieves the aforementioned goals.

Estonian higher education internationalisation is a big challenge for the country. However, since the implementation of the strategy considerable steps have been taken to internationalise higher education.

Important improvements have been made mainly in the domain of Ministry of Education and Research. Changes are to do with legislative environment, internationalisation of study and the development of international support system.

“International support system is important to support the openness and tolerance of the general society” – Laura Kirss

Less improvement can be seen in activities, which need an agreement between different policy areas. One of the most critical questions is the alignment of goals in higher education in Estonian and internationalisation.

Following recommendations were made to the government

  1. Explain to different target groups, how they can benefit from internationalisation of higher education; disprove fears and prejudices about internationalisation
  2. Set roles and make agreements on cooperation of different institutions on improving internationalisation
  3. Take concrete actions to change immigration policy to support internationalisation
  4. Create more extensive marketing programme for Estonia
  5. Develop internationalisation support system in the society
  6. Align the goals of Estonian language policy and higher education internationalisation
  7. Focus national higher education internationalisation methods into areas, which have the highest potential to help with the economic development.
  8. Allocate financial support to higher education institutions, which can show improvement in successful internationalisation
  9. Define the expectations and the roles of different higher education institutions in the development of internationalisation
  10. Treat internationalisation of study and research as one entity