In contemporary educational practice, speed is often treated as the primary indicator of effectiveness. Rapid program launches, accelerated scaling, and constant activity are widely read as signs of competence and momentum. Yet this assumption rests on a fragile premise: that movement itself is evidence of quality.

The reality is more complex. In educational systems, acceleration often reveals not strength but incompleteness. The more intricate the task, the less it can be resolved through haste alone.

Strong educational projects do not emerge from continuous motion. They take shape in a different register of time, one in which thought is allowed to mature into structure.

The Hidden Layer of Work

Every serious educational project contains a layer of work that remains largely invisible. It is not a stage of inactivity, but a mode of professional silence in which meaning begins to organize itself.

At this level, the logic of future decisions becomes clearer. Connections between elements are recognized. The language of the project is refined. What is essential is separated from what is merely urgent.

This hidden layer cannot be rushed because it is not about execution. It is about foundation. Without it, even well-intentioned actions remain fragmented and disconnected.

Silence as a Professional Instrument

Silence in this context should not be confused with passivity. It is an active condition of attention, one that makes precise thinking possible.

In many professional environments, silence is treated as a deficit: a pause in productivity, a lack of visible progress, a moment that must be filled. But in educational work, silence often serves a more demanding function. It protects the integrity of a process that is still forming.

Silence allows experts to distinguish between what truly emerges from the system and what is imposed on it prematurely. It creates the conditions for judgment that is not rushed, reactive, or merely performative.

Expertise as the Capacity to Wait

A mature expert is not defined by the speed of response alone. Expertise also includes the capacity to remain with uncertainty long enough for the logic of the situation to become visible.

This means resisting the impulse to act before the problem is fully articulated. It means not replacing ambiguity with premature solutions. It means allowing a project to gather its internal coherence before demanding that it be fully operational.

Such restraint is not hesitation. It is discipline. It requires confidence in processes that are not yet fully visible but are already taking shape.

Why Premature Solutions Fail

One of the main risks of speed-driven educational work is the creation of premature structures. These structures often look convincing at the outset because they produce the appearance of progress.

But appearances can be misleading. A project built too quickly often lacks the internal architecture necessary to endure complexity over time. As a result, it becomes dependent on constant correction, adjustment, and repair.

In the long run, haste does not save time. It simply postpones the deeper work that should have been done at the beginning.

System as a Product of Time

Educational systems are not assembled from a series of isolated decisions. They are formed through coherence — conceptual, structural, and methodological.

Coherence takes time. Not as wasted time, but as the necessary condition for thought. Only through a process of careful development can goals, tools, and outcomes be aligned.

This is why system building is not merely a technical task. It is an intellectual and organizational act that depends on the ability to wait, refine, and revisit assumptions before they harden into practice.

Stability and Adaptability

Paradoxically, the projects that are developed without haste are often the most adaptable. Their stability does not come from rigidity. It comes from clarity.

When a project has a strong internal logic, it can adjust without losing shape. It does not require constant external intervention because its structure already supports change from within.

This kind of adaptability is especially valuable in education, where contexts shift quickly and rigid models tend to break under pressure. A well-formed system is not less flexible. It is more resilient because it has been built with care.

Silence as a Stage of Formation

Under pressure to deliver fast results, silence may appear luxurious or inefficient. But in serious educational work, it should be understood as a legitimate stage of formation.

This is the stage in which meaning is made. It is where the project becomes intelligible to itself before it becomes visible to others.

Ignoring this stage often leads to a predictable pattern: a project accelerates early, then slows down under the weight of its own contradictions. The problem was never too little activity. It was too little structure.

The Boundary Between Projects That Last and Those That Do Not

In the end, the difference between educational projects that endure and those that fade is not simply a matter of resources or ambition. It is a matter of how they relate to time.

Some projects are launched quickly, gain momentum, and disappear just as fast. Others develop more slowly but retain coherence, adaptability, and depth.

What separates them is not only competence. It is the willingness to honor the silent phase of thinking — the phase in which strong educational work is truly born.

University international programs long seemed one of the most reliable components of the system: they added prestige, expanded connections, strengthened reputation, and created a sense of belonging to the big world. But today this model is rapidly losing stability. What recently looked like natural progress toward openness now increasingly faces political restrictions, financial barriers, digital incompatibility, and a crisis of trust. Universities still speak the language of internationalization, but they operate in a completely different reality.

International Programs as a Symbol of the Era

For a long time, a university's international activity was seen as proof of its inclusion in the global academic market. The more exchanges, agreements, foreign students, and joint programs, the more convincing the university appeared to applicants, partners, and the state. International programs were not just educational practice but a key part of the university's image.

This logic worked while the global academic environment seemed relatively stable and predictable. But universities got too used to living in a world where internationality seemed to exist by itself. Now this backdrop has disappeared. International activity no longer runs on inertia. It needs to be constantly rebuilt from scratch, and that's a completely different level of complexity.

Universities No Longer Live Outside Politics

One of the main reasons for the crisis of international programs is their growing connection with geopolitics. Universities long loved to see themselves as a space where science and education stand above political conflicts. In practice, this proved an illusion. As soon as international relations deteriorate, academic ties are the first to suffer.

Joint projects stop, visa procedures become more complicated, restrictions emerge on travel, equipment supplies, access to digital services and databases. Even where there are no formal bans, the effect of distrust kicks in. Partnerships become less predictable, and international cooperation more costly and risky.

As a result, university international programs lose one of their key qualities — stability. That's why international programs today are no longer about "academic exchange freedom." They're about constant maneuvering in an unstable environment.

The Old Model Has Exhausted Itself

The crisis of international programs stems not only from external circumstances but also from internal fatigue of the model itself. In many universities, internationalization was measured too long by quantitative indicators: number of agreements, number of foreign students, volume of exchanges, presence of English-language pages and presentation materials. But all this doesn't answer the main question: does cooperation actually work?

You can have dozens of agreements and almost no real collaboration. You can launch "international" programs without creating proper administrative, language, and academic support. You can talk about globalization but actually remain in local mode — just in prettier packaging. That's why international programs break so easily: they were too often built as a showcase, not as a system.

Money Is Needed More Than People Think

International activity requires stable funding, which becomes a problem during crises. Resources are needed for scholarships, mobility, support for foreign students, translation, marketing, international offices, legal assistance, and digital infrastructure. When universities cut expenses, these areas often prove most vulnerable.

Moreover, international programs depend on countless organizational details that go unnoticed while the system works: from visa support speed to English website quality, from document recognition to partner communication convenience. If even one element fails, the entire international circuit starts to stall.

The Russian Case — Not an Exception but an Amplifier of the Problem

For Russian universities, this breakdown is especially painful. Until recently, international programs were often built around one clear model — the "Bologna" one. But when that model started to collapse, an unpleasant truth emerged: many universities had embedded it too deeply in their identity and developed their own alternatives too weakly.

Hence the confusion. Formally, you can change program structures, rewrite documents, replace degree level names. But without new logic, new partnerships, and new management culture behind it, all changes remain cosmetic.

In this sense, the Russian situation merely highlighted what was already a problem in many countries: internationality was too often seen as an add-on, not part of the university's core.

The World Isn't Closing — It's Fragmenting

Talking about the "death" of international programs would be wrong. The world hasn't stopped being international. Students still want to study abroad, universities still seek partners, science still requires knowledge exchange. But the global academic market no longer resembles what it was ten years ago.

It has become fragmented. Countries and universities now choose not just the best partnerships, but safe, predictable, politically acceptable, and financially sustainable ones. The universal logic "if you're a good university, they'll come to you" works less and less. The filter logic works more: who you can work with, who you can collaborate with, through what channels, under what conditions.

This changes the very nature of international programs. They cease to be a natural extension of the educational environment and become a separate management task — complex, costly, and not always rewarding.

What Will Replace It

The future of international programs isn't about returning to the old model but rebuilding it. The old model of internationality won't disappear overnight, but it can no longer be a universal standard. The new internationality will be less decorative, more substantive, and more locally anchored: fewer formal agreements, but stronger educational and scientific ties.

At the center of this new model will be not pretty numbers, but the ability to build trust, ensure digital compatibility, support real mobility, and create partnerships that withstand crises.The internationality of the future is not a showcase of globality, but hard work to maintain connections in a world that looks less and less like a single space.

Instead of a Conclusion

International programs break not because universities suddenly stopped being global in ambition. They break because the environment in which those ambitions once seemed natural has changed. Openness no longer comes by default. Trust has become scarce. And the universal model of academic internationality is a luxury that now needs to be earned anew.

In this new reality, universities will have to choose: either build a sustainable international strategy or continue reproducing its external forms without real substance.

Twenty Years in International Higher Education

For more than twenty years, I have worked in international higher education. I have created international programmes, developed partnerships between universities, worked with academic and leadership teams, and been involved in institutional transformation.

Throughout these years, one question has stayed with me: what does a university need to become in order to remain open to the world, alive, and capable of continuous development in a rapidly changing world?

Today, this question feels more important than ever.

A Changing Landscape

We live in a world where knowledge no longer belongs to a single university. A student may learn across several educational environments, work with people from different countries, contribute to an international project, use AI as a learning partner, and create an educational journey that does not fit neatly within the boundaries of one institution.

Research increasingly emerges at the intersection of universities, business, technology, professional communities and society. And international education is becoming about much more than moving people across borders. It is becoming a space for connection, exchange, shared learning and co-creation.

A Deeper Question

This living and evolving reality brings us to a deeper question: what is a university in such a world?

Could a university be more than an educational organisation? Could it be a living ecosystem?

A place where people, ideas, knowledge, technologies and communities come together. Where internationalisation is not a separate function, but a natural dimension of university life. Where students are not simply recipients of education, but active members of a community and co-creators of their own learning journeys. Where partnerships are not just agreements between institutions, but living spaces for creating something new together. And where a university itself is capable of learning — observing what is happening around it, rethinking its approaches, experimenting, adapting while staying true to its identity.

The Living University

I call this idea Living University.

For me, it is not a metaphor or a ready-made model that can simply be implemented. It is a philosophy and a way of looking at the university. A university as a living system — connected to its environment, continuously evolving, and creating the future together with its communities.

The Role of Praxis

This is the thinking behind Praxis — a platform for the future of international higher education. I want Praxis to be a space for exploring what international education can become, and what the university itself might become in the years ahead. Not by offering universal recipes. Not by designing yet another “ideal university model”. But by asking better questions, connecting ideas, exploring possibilities and creating new approaches together.

For decades, internationalisation has been organised as something a university does.

It has had its own department, strategy, indicators and institutional responsibilities.

Yet, in many universities, it has remained structurally separate from the core processes through which knowledge is created, teaching is designed, research is conducted and academic communities evolve.

Over more than two decades in international higher education, I have seen this pattern repeatedly.

Internationalisation is discussed as a separate item on the agenda. Mobility figures become evidence of progress. Agreements accumulate, while their academic potential remains largely unrealised.

Gradually, a distinction emerges between the visibility of international activity and the actual international capacity of a university.

And this distinction matters more than it may first appear.

Because internationalisation is not simply an institutional function to be managed.

It is a quality of the university itself.

In a Living University, internationalisation is embedded in how knowledge is created across cultures and disciplines, how students learn through different academic environments, how research connects to global challenges, and how partnerships generate possibilities that no institution could create alone.

It is not confined to a department, a strategy or a portfolio of activities.

It becomes part of the university's way of thinking, learning and evolving.

This transition, however, raises a deeper institutional challenge.

When internationalisation becomes embedded across the university, its governance can no longer rely exclusively on traditional structures of ownership, coordination and measurement.

The international office does not become irrelevant. Its role becomes more strategic: from managing international activity towards enabling connections, building institutional capacity and shaping the conditions in which international collaboration can transform academic life.

The implications extend further.

Students encounter learning pathways that cross institutional and national boundaries. Faculty engage in more interconnected forms of knowledge creation. Leadership must learn to work with distributed agency, complexity and outcomes that cannot always be captured by conventional indicators.

The university gains new forms of connection — but also new demands on its capacity to coordinate, recognise and learn.

The question, then, is not how much internationalisation a university has.

It is whether international connectedness has become part of its institutional DNA.

And if it has, what does this mean for the way a university is organised, governed and transformed?

I am exploring these questions through the idea of the Living University — not as a ready-made model, but as a lens through which to examine what universities may need to become.

Because the next stage of internationalisation may not be defined by the expansion of international activities.

It may be defined by a fundamental change in what a university understands itself to be.

For years, the international office was the place where internationalisation happened.

It managed mobility. It signed agreements. It hosted delegations. It reported numbers.

And it did this work with dedication — often with too few people and too many expectations.

That work mattered. It built the foundation.

But the foundation is no longer the whole building.

I remember a conversation during a learning experience with a vice-president responsible for internationalisation at one of the world’s leading universities.

I no longer recall the university’s name or the person’s name. But I remember very clearly one idea she shared about the purpose of her role.

When the university’s president invited her to take on the position, she was surprised. She asked why he had chosen her.

His answer stayed with me.

He explained that the university needed someone who could connect the other vice-presidents — someone who would help them understand that international education was not an additional activity or the responsibility of one department, but something central to the university’s development.

The person in this role needed more than international expertise.

They needed the ability to communicate across institutional boundaries, build trust, bring different perspectives together, and help colleagues see how international connectedness could strengthen their own academic and strategic priorities.

The role was not simply to lead internationalisation. It was to help the university become capable of living it.

I have returned to this idea many times throughout my own work in international higher education.

Because it points to a deeper institutional question.

What if the purpose of international leadership is not to make the international office more powerful, but to make internationalisation less dependent on the international office?

Today, internationalisation is already taking place across the university — in classrooms, research teams, student projects, digital collaboration, and partnerships that no longer wait for one office to initiate them.

The challenge is no longer simply to create international activity.

It is to help the whole institution recognise, connect and develop the international dimension of its academic life.

This requires a different kind of leadership: less focused on ownership, more focused on enabling; less concerned with controlling activities, more concerned with creating the conditions in which meaningful collaboration can emerge.

And perhaps, in five years, the university may no longer need a vice-president whose primary task is to explain why internationalisation matters.

Not because the role will have failed or become irrelevant.

But because its purpose will have been fulfilled.

When international connectedness becomes part of how a university thinks, teaches, researches, collaborates and makes decisions, it no longer needs to be constantly introduced as a separate institutional priority.

The function may change because the institution itself has changed.

This is how I understand the future of the international office — or perhaps, more accurately, the future of international leadership within a university.

Not as the centre that owns internationalisation, but as a force that helps the university become a more connected, open and continuously learning ecosystem.

In a Living University, internationalisation is not something that happens in one office.

It is part of the university’s way of being.

Some professional conversations stay with us for years because they reveal something larger than the immediate subject.

This was one of those conversations for me.

And I believe that the next stage of international higher education will be shaped by people who are ready to think beyond organisational boundaries — and to explore what universities could become when international connectedness is no longer a function, but a shared institutional capacity.

For many years, international higher education has been built around partnerships.

Universities sign agreements, establish exchange programmes, develop joint degrees, launch research collaborations and build strategic relationships with institutions around the world.

These partnerships can be extremely valuable. They open doors, create opportunities and bring institutions together around shared ambitions.

But I increasingly wonder whether the future of international higher education lies not simply in building more partnerships, but in something more fundamental: the ability of universities to become part of — and actively shape — living networks.

This question matters to me not only intellectually, but also because of my own professional experience.

Over more than two decades in international higher education, I have been involved in developing international programmes and partnerships with universities in different countries. I have worked on joint educational programmes in which institutions had to move beyond agreeing to cooperate and learn how to create something meaningful together.

And this is where I began to see an important distinction.

A partnership can connect two institutions.

A network can create a space in which multiple institutions, people, disciplines and communities continuously exchange knowledge, learn from one another and generate possibilities that would not exist within any single institution.

This distinction may become increasingly important for the university of the future.

The traditional partnership model is often bilateral:

There is nothing wrong with this model. In many cases, it remains exactly the right one.

But imagine a different configuration:

Here, the value of the network is no longer simply the sum of individual relationships.

It emerges from the connections between them — from the ways people, knowledge, experience and opportunities move across institutional boundaries.

A student may learn across several institutions.

A research project may bring together universities, companies and local communities.

A graduate may return as a mentor, researcher or co-creator.

A programme may be designed jointly by academics from several countries.

Knowledge generated in one part of the network may transform practice somewhere else.

New relationships may emerge from existing ones, creating opportunities that no single participant could have planned in advance.

The network learns.

And when the network learns, the university learns with it.

Research on university networks points towards the importance of collaboration in addressing complex challenges that exceed the capabilities of any single institution. Yet successful networks depend on more than formal structures or the number of participants. They require mutual trust, reciprocity, openness and a willingness to learn together.

Recent thinking on higher education partnerships likewise places dialogue and co-creation at the heart of relationships capable of generating lasting change.

This is why I believe we need to rethink what we mean by a university partnership.

A partnership should not only ask:

It should also ask:

And perhaps one more question deserves our attention:

For me, this is where the idea of the Living University becomes particularly meaningful.

A living university cannot be fully understood as a self-contained institution, operating within its own boundaries and drawing primarily on its internal resources.

It learns through relationships.

It develops through connections.

It responds to its environment.

It brings different forms of knowledge together.

And it continuously creates new relationships through which new possibilities emerge.

In this sense, a network is not simply an external resource for a Living University.

This perspective shifts our attention from the institution as an isolated organisational structure to the institution as a participant in a wider, evolving system of relationships.

The university does not lose its identity by becoming more connected. Rather, its identity and capabilities can evolve through the relationships it builds, the knowledge it encounters and the contributions it makes to the wider ecosystem.

A living network is not merely a collection of institutions linked by agreements. It is a dynamic environment in which relationships can generate learning, adaptation and possibilities that extend beyond the original purpose of any individual partnership.

And this changes the meaning of internationalisation.

Internationalisation is often discussed in terms of measurable activities: how many countries a university is connected to, how many agreements it has signed, how many students participate in exchange programmes, or how many international partnerships it maintains.

These indicators can be useful. But they do not necessarily tell us how deeply an institution is connected to the wider world — or what it learns through those connections.

From the perspective of the Living University, internationalisation becomes a question of how effectively an institution participates in global networks of knowledge, learning and co-creation.

Do its relationships enable knowledge to move across institutional and national boundaries?

Do they bring together different perspectives and forms of expertise?

Do they create opportunities for people to work together on challenges that matter?

And do they help the university change, adapt and develop in response to what it learns?

This is also why I think the future of international partnerships may be less about building ever-larger portfolios of agreements and more about cultivating meaningful, adaptive and generative relationships.

Some partnerships will remain bilateral, and rightly so.

Others may develop into wider networks.

Some networks may be temporary, emerging around a particular challenge and evolving as that challenge changes.

Others may grow into long-term ecosystems of collaboration, learning and innovation.

The important thing is not to replace one model with another, but to understand what each makes possible — and how different forms of connection can work together.

The question may no longer be simply:

It may be:

And perhaps an even deeper question is:

These are questions I am increasingly interested in exploring through the idea of the Living University.

If we understand a university as a living, learning and evolving ecosystem, its future depends not only on the knowledge it produces internally, but also on the quality, diversity and generativity of the relationships through which it learns from the world — and helps the world learn with it.

This calls for a different way of thinking about international collaboration: not simply as a portfolio of institutional relationships, but as a living infrastructure for learning, development and collective creation.

It invites us to look beyond the agreements themselves and pay closer attention to what happens between the institutions that sign them.

Because the real potential of international higher education may lie not in how many connections a university establishes, but in what those connections set in motion.

For me, this is where international education becomes much more than internationalisation.

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