‘The beginning of a new academic year is always like the beginning of a new life. Our faculty is developing rapidly," Anna Litovkina, the Dean of the BSU International Faculty, shared her mood on the eve of the new academic year.

"At the preparatory faculty we have a new contingent on internship. First of all, I would like to note a student from Latin America - from Chile, from Ecuador we graduated a master's student this year. We are especially proud of two female students of the prep-faculty, our alumni, who underwent language internships. They expressed their desire to become PhDs in Russia, so they joined our post-graduate school. These are our two promising girls, one from Mongolia and the other one from China.

It is wonderful that foreigners still have the opportunity to study with ministerial scholarships. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation allocates a sufficient number of scholarships, so foreign students can study in any Russian region. I am glad that many choose our Baikal State University. Our name is well known abroad, especially since there are our graduates who hold high positions in their home countries. One graduate of the International Faculty of BSU has a father who is a high-ranking politician in one of the African countries. This student completed a language internship with us, then entered the BSU master's program in linguistics and now holds a high diplomatic post in his country Guinea.

In 2023-2024, a student from one more African country - Togo - will study at BSU. I would like to note that the International Faculty has a good enrollment at the bachelor's degree. Thanks to our business trip to Manchuria, our enrollment is twice as high. It is one thing when you study the website of the university where you plan to enroll, but another thing is live communication with teachers, native speakers, so such meetings are very important. We gave a series of interactive lectures there.

Of course, this year we will continue the testing procedure. We have proved that it is not scary, you can be tested for different levels of language skills. Therefore, thanks to our activities, we will have 50 people from Manchuria alone.

This year we have a very good enrollment in dual degree programs. Russian-Chinese programs are gaining momentum. The borders have been open for six months. There are academic exchanges of native-speaking teachers. Now two very strong native speaker teachers from China have come to BSU. Our teachers have also gone to China and will work in four partner universities.

Almost 100 BSU students went to China for summer language training. During the academic year, 50 students who study Chinese as a second foreign language from all areas of study at BSU will also go to China for training. We see support from China, we see how they support Russian students. They provide good dormitories, made maximum discounts: both in terms of food and admission, organized excursions. The guys have already returned from Beijing, and they are returning from Shenyang the other day. We have not had any language internships since 2019.