Internationalisation in higher education – short background
Jane Knight’s definition of Internationalisation is perhaps the most widely accepted (2004, 26): the process of integrating an international, intercultural, and global dimension into the purpose, functions (teaching, research, and service), and delivery of higher education. Some scholars argue that the tradition of cross-border academic exchanges goes back to spontaneous, continuous, and organic processes cultivated within the nascent universities of medieval Europe (Altbach and Teichler 2001; Jones and Oleksiyenko 2011). Clearly, however, the regularisation and modernisation of such activities came about at a later stage, with the advent of nation-states and the institutionalisation of a common academic culture (de Wit 2002). Contrary to globalisation, which is contested and questioned as to its meanings and consequences, internationalisation in higher education has become an axiomatic concept of good quality during the last three decades, in academic terminology, mostly alongside massive transformation processes that higher education systems worldwide have undergone (Marginson and Rhoades 2002).
In most countries, internationalisation has become an increasingly important aspect of higher education and moved from the margins to the centre of the academic enterprise (de Wit 2011b). Directors of higher education institutions are striving to internationalise their institutions for economic, political, academic, and socio-cultural reasons (de Wit 2002; Hudzik 2011), and governments invest increasing resources in this process. Enders (2004, 365) notes the emergence of a greater emphasis on international influences in higher education because ‘the narrative of globalization … is not just a narrative but an ideology with multiple meanings and linkages’.
Brandenburg and de-Wit (2011) ignited discourse on the future directions of internationalisation by defining the current era as ‘the end of internationalization’, questioning the axiom that a successful higher education necessarily requires engagement in internationalisation. Hence, the discourse has evolved from a focus on internationalisation’s increasing importance in education (giving benefits such as improving academic quality and accessibility of education for diverse populations, promoting international scientific research, and strengthening the independence of educational institutions) to a mounting critique regarding the process’s utility and the erroneous manner in which countries and higher education institutions interpret its meaning. This critique attributes many negative implications to internationalisation, pegged to neoliberalism within the socio-economic discourse. Such critiques emphasise the danger inherent in continuing, and expanding, the hegemony of English to the neglect of local languages (Choi 2010; Le Ha 2013). Moreover, they lament the control over educational attainment wielded by western, developed countries – particularly the USA – by means of their budgetary superiority, which enables them to attract human resources from abroad while sapping developing countries, and even certain developed countries, of their most talented students and faculty (Yemini 2014). Indeed, ‘brain drain’ has become one of the main problems in small and less developed countries, and immigration laws in several regions have been passed to help protect local communities (Fan and Stark 2007). Finally, critics have contested universities’ cynical use of internationalisation activities to advance their placement in certain measures within university ranking systems, as well as the dominance of financial factors that have overtaken the internationalisation venture at the expense of other rationales (Branderburg and de Wit 2011). Such critics express disdain regarding the power of economic and political considerations that internationalisation introduces to the detriment of academic and social rationales. While the academic discourse on the future of internationalisation h s become louder and more widespread, several attempts have been made to shape the cumulative understanding of the current and past research in the area of internationalisation in higher education. Those attempts are important in providing an understanding of discourse analysis in this field, which could lead to the upgrading of the framework used for policy-making and future research.
Outcomes of past research review efforts
Several studies have aimed to provide an overview of the research undertaken on internationalisation in higher education; and most of these are concerned with specific subjects such as research on online learning (Wallace 2003), international students (Abdullah, Aziz, and Ibrahim 2013), and international education (Dolby and Rahman 2008). Kehm and Teichler (2007) characterise the main topics in research on internationalisation in higher education as: mobility of student and staff; mutual influences of higher education systems on each other; internationalisation of teaching, learning, and research; strategies to internationalise; knowledge transfer; modes of cooperation and competition; and national and sub-national policies regarding the international dimension of higher education. Their review has been widely cited and offers a great number of intriguing insights but suffers from certain methodological weaknesses, including the lack of a systematic approach and relatively limited quantitative analysis. Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka (2006) have explored the marketing of higher education and universities in an international context. They systematically collected, reviewed, scrutinised, and critically analysed the relevant research literature between 1992 and 2004. In addition, several other reviews aimed to provide an overview of the future of higher education research; indeed, internationalisation in higher education was one of the most prominent topics that emerged. For example, Teichler (2003) considers the need to research potential future directions of higher education; and according to one of his studies, internationalisation became a key issue in debates on higher education in most European countries during the 1990s and is likely to remain high on the agenda in the future. Teichler also identifies areas in the internationalisation of higher education that researchers should further examine. In a later study (2005), Teichler addresses general issues and selected developments in individual European countries. As part of this latter study, he discusses the growing internationalisation of higher education research in Europe and argues that international organisations played an important role in promoting higher education research. Saarinen and Ursin (2012) identify different approaches to higher education policy change through the prism of internationalisation, based on an analysis of recent literature on higher education policy change.
Existing literature reviews focus on specific themes and aspects of internationalisation in higher education or discuss higher education in general, but identify internationalisation as one of the most prominent themes emerging in the field. In contrast, this study provides a novel, systematic, and longitudinal screening and analysis of the over 7,000 existing academic publications on internationalisation in higher education,...
