The International Experience of Using Higher Education as a Resource of “Soft Power” of the State

The article analyses the international experience of using higher education as a foreign policy resource of the state. The relevance of the topic is due to the intensified confrontation between the leading States on the world stage, which occurs not only in the power and diplomatic spheres but also in the use of the policy of “soft power". Here,university education aimed at promising young people with not yet established values play the most important role. The author formulated the key reasons for its application as such a tool. In particular, the ease of use of such tools is explained by the secrecy of its impact, the ability to fill educational programs with ideological components in the declared de-ideologization of the educational process, as well as the ability to work ‘long’ with the most promising personnel. The author indicated that the objects of such educational policy are two target groups. The first - the most promising staff who after graduation remain in the country of study, replenishing academic and research staff of the leading universities, which are trained or employed in large private and public organisations as highly qualified specialists. The second - the students who return to the countries that sent them to study, where they become conductors of the ideological settings set in them. The article also discusses the tools of impact on target groups, which primarily include grant programs, an organisation of student and teacher exchanges, a delegation of teachers to give lectures, joint educational and research projects, as well as funding the production of educational and research literature written in the necessary ideological key. 

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