One of the UNESCO Education Strategy 2014-2021 key areas is internationalization emerging from trends in higher education and penetrating into policy agenda predominantly shaped by volatility of integration processes at global and regional levels. All the burden of the interconnected world is concentrated in the universities’ strategies on greater internationalization, more than this, the most enduring actors of managing the implementation of internationalization strategy are the staff working in universities’ International Offices, which is argued as the case for Kazakhstan: despite its landlocked geographic position the country is in the epicenter of global and regional dynamics. This article provides a review based on existing body of literature dedicated to salient internationalization and globalization themes, interwoven and countervailed, with analysis on how national policy affects or is affected by international or multilateral initiatives and how universities in Kazakhstan cope with challenges of internationalization. Kazakhstan is fighting through its own unique path of transforming higher educational establishments employing Bologna framework as a conceptual model of modernization. However, the pressure of changing higher education landscapes and ever-growing competition makes universities of Kazakhstan to apply the practices that go beyond Bologna action lines. Finally, at institutional level universities need more systematic, comprehensive, sustained managerial approaches to produce impact alongside with outcome pursuing internationalization strategies.