Comprehensive Internationalization

Institutional pathways to success

John K. Hudzik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317676720
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

This book is a timely insight into the internationalization of higher education institutions. The internationalization of higher education is a global phenomenon, but with substantial variation in how it is made operational in individual institutions. Comprehensive Internationalization focuses on desirable practices in institutions and their actual approaches to implement a more integrated, strategic, or comprehensive global engagement across their core missions: teaching, research, and service.

Part I of the book investigates a wide range of issues governing the internationalization of institutions:

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• Outlining the origins, meaning and evolution toward more strategic and comprehensive forms of internationalization;

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• building an understanding of the meanings of comprehensive internationalization, as well as common aspirations, when linked to different types of institutions;

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• understanding the rationales and motivations for internationalization and intended results;

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• creating an institutional vision and culture to support comprehensive internationalization;

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• and implementing key strategies for successful internationalization in terms of practical actions and programs and results, including identifying and ameliorating barriers, engaging organizational change, assessing outcomes, and obtaining resources.

Part II of the book offers case stories from institutions across the globe which describe varying pathways toward more comprehensive internationalization. Institutions were chosen to reflect the diversity of higher education and approaches to internationalization. An analysis of the cases uncovers similarities and differences, as well as common lessons to be learned. With contributions from mainland Europe, Australia, the USA, the UK, Latin America, Singapore and South Africa, the global application of the book is unparalleled.

Comprehensive Internationalization will be of vital interest to a wide variety of higher education institutional leaders and managers as they address the problems and solutions for institutional internationalization available to them in a rapidly changing educational world and a 21st Century global environment.

Part I
Comprehensive internationalization of higher education institutions

Chapter 1
Comprehensive internationalization

Roots, aspects, and evolution

Higher education internationalization is not a new concept. Its roots and guiding principles can be traced back thousands of years to higher-learning idea centers which attracted scholars and students from diverse places. These centers, among them the Confucian Schools in China (sixth century BCE), the Platonic Academy of Athens (fifth century BCE), the Library of Alexandria (fourth century BCE), the Academy of Gunishapur in Persia (third century), Nalanda in India (fifth century), and Renaissance Italy (fourteenth century) were intellectual hubs drawing mobile scholars and the curious from afar.

The movement of people in search of new ideas and the movement of ideas to influence people in new places, as well as the blending of diverse cultures and epistemologies formed the inner core of early higher learning. These also provided the root stock (perhaps the telos in Aristotle’s terms), for contemporary forms of internationalization of higher learning.

In ancient periods, as well as with more contemporary idea centers such as universities, cross-border and cross-cultural influences impact the core missions of higher learning. These missions center on knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination (the latter includes applications of new ideas).

Comprehensive internationalization is a relatively new term and is in part a response to the greater complexity and dimensions associated with an evolving notion of internationalization. Although mobility has been the most visible facet of higher education internationalization, much attention is now directed also to internationalization cutting across all key institutional missions and integrated into the ethos and key functions of higher education. In a contemporary and commonly cited definition, comprehensive internationalization is viewed as:

Commitment confirmed through action to infuse international and comparative perspectives throughout the teaching, research and service missions of higher education. It shapes institutional ethos and values and touches the entire higher education enterprise …. It is an institutional imperative not just a desirable possibility …. [It] not only impacts all of campus life but the institution’s external frames of reference, partnerships and relations.

(Hudzik 2011: 6)

While the seed stock of higher education internationalization traces back thousands of years, its contemporary manifestations have evolved to become multi-faceted. There are many reasons for this elaboration of dimensions and aspects, some aspects are controversial, and there is diversity in how internationalization plays out in practice across institutions and regions and evolves toward more institutionalized, strategic and comprehensive forms.

This chapter focuses on these issues to provide a foundation for successive chapters.

Evolving and diverse meanings and dimensions

Higher education internationalization is not a homogenous concept. It has many aspects. It is more akin to the idea of a “global concept” as the term is used in the philosophy of science—a concept formed of many interrelated dimensions, each given practical meaning by action and measurement. An analog is the “global concept” of intelligence. Intelligence has many aspects (observation, recall, analysis, synthesis, conclusions, forming generalizations, etc.) each defined by different means of measurement. The same has become true with the concept “higher education internationalization” as it applies across missions and the multi-dimensional meanings and measurements of learning, discover and service.

The “neatness” that might come with a simple uni-dimensional meaning for higher education internationalization would not reflect the reality of how people see it (Knight 2004: 6); they grow accustomed to the concept in terms relevant to them. More to the point, a homogeneous view of what internationalization is will not square with the reality of diverse facets, actions, and responsibilities that are now associated with it.

Numerous programs and activities fall within higher education internationalization: for example, the organized cross-border mobility of students and scholars, language learning, internationalization of curricula (e.g., internationalization at home (Waechter 2003) which is inclusive of cross-cultural learning and sensitivity and internationalization of the on-campus curriculum), cross-border institutional partnerships for learning, research, service and development (e.g., joint degrees, joint research, branch operations), and area or regional studies. In this sense the term “cross-border” as it relates to internationalization has both import and export dimensions, as well as joint multi-national undertakings.

Another aspect focuses on cross-border studies of thematic knowledge areas (e.g., international business, health, agriculture, international development, global environmental studies, peace studies, to name a few) to recognize that nearly everything today has local and global connections.

Other aspects shape ways of thinking about cross-border and cross-cultural similarities and differences, transitioning from the comparative exploration of diversity of culture and place toward critical thinking and learning through the several lenses of different cultures and world views. This means changing ways of thinking, adopting new methodologies, raising different epistemological questions, and developing critical consciousness and values awareness for a globally diverse environment.

Institutional diversity in priorities and actions

Hans de Wit pointed out as early as 2002 that as “the international dimension of higher education gains more attention and recognition, people tend to use it in the way that best suits their purpose” (de Wit 2002: 14). So do higher education institutions. Not all universities or knowledge centers emphasize or even pursue all types of actions associated with internationalization. Institutions are idiosyncratic in their priorities for action and will engage comprehensive internationalization in their own ways. Yet, what institutions share under the banner of internationalization is the idea that innovation and learning is not bound by place, but rather aided by connections to other places and cultures. Similarities and differences in approaches to internationalization are probed further in Chapters 2 and 3 and also in the institutional case studies.

Those involved in higher education internationalization also tend to focus on what is relevant to their experience. Individual and institutional experiences and priorities morph over time, so it shouldn’t be said that higher education internationalization is a static concept. New behaviors, actions, and program approaches arise over time. Existing programs are renamed to reflect new visualizations (e.g., from international studies to global studies, or the focus of mobility redefined from students alone to incorporate faculty, or the emergence of branch campuses abroad as a redefinition of the meaning of “offshore” educational delivery) (de Wit 2013).

From national to international institutions?

As institutions internationalize, caution is advised not to assume “a change process transforming a national higher education institution into an international higher education institution” (Soderqvist 2002: 29). While internationalization drives an institution’s vision outward toward a borderless frame of reference, it remains the case that institutions largely remain locally and nationally funded and influenced by national policies, as well as by local constituencies. There are examples of institutions with a global vision serving a global clientele (for example New York University under the presidency of John Sexton) (Loveland 2011b). Several have the clout and/or financial independence to carve themselves huge degrees of freedom to prioritize and envision as they see fit. However, national and local influences remain powerful factors for the great majority of institutions as well as global ones.

Local vs. global is a false dichotomy when thinking about higher education internationalization. Higher education in the twenty-first century can mediate the global impacting the local and the local mediating the global (Hudzik and Simon 2012). The diversity in how internationalization is made concrete by individual higher education institutions reflects in part the differing ways in which the local and global play out.

Is there a dark side to twenty-first century higher education internationalization?

There have been a number of significant concerns raised about the direction of internationalization by those long experienced in higher education internationalization, including Brandenburg and de Wit (2011a, 2011b, 2012); de Wit (2011a, 2011b, 2012); International Association of Universities (IAU 2012); Knight (2011a, 2011b); and Maringe and Foskett (2010). Such concerns are popular topics at recent international education conferences (e.g., NAFSA, EAIE, AIEA, and the British Council’s Going Global in 2012; also see Elizabeth Redden’s (2011) summary of a NAFSA panel session). The critiques and concerns are varied and not uniformly agreed on by commentators; the more common issues include:

• With marketing and commodification of higher education internationalization, we are moving away from assistance and aid to support the education of students from developing countries to revenue enhancing fee- and cost-based models, with many students priced out of access.
• There are fears that the emergence of a global higher education system will be one in which institutions are homogenized to a common standard or model (IAU 2012) and riding over local/national needs and priorities.
• The emergence of developed-country branch-campus and franchise operations represent a new form of market-driven colonialism, and a disincentive to high-quality indigenous capacity building.
• There remain strong concerns that the global competition for talent is moving higher education internationalization away from cooperation toward competition to attract the best with consequences including student and faculty brain drain and with concentrations of talent and resources in intellectual hubs, and little available for the rest.
• Ascendant neo-liberal values coupled to higher education commodification and marketization in its most virulent form deprioritizes actions and programs that don’t have a readily recognizable revenue stream, affecting both quality and access.
• The rise of global ranking schemes puts a premium on the value of international engagement as a means of “becoming known” and building collaborations, resulting in building rank within the club of players. The additional concern is that cross-border institutional networks form around exclusive clubs of institutions with the “right” pedigree, and not necessarily around other criteria such as maximizing institutional capacity building and program excellence.
• There is the general critique that higher education institutions are moving from cooperation, partnership, exchange, and mutual capacity building to competition, commercialization, self-interest, and status building (Knight 2011a).
• Viewing higher education internationalization as an end instead of as a means focuses assessment on inputs (money, people, programs devoted to it), and outputs (e.g., numbers of study abroad programs or participants, numbers of international students, numbers of memoranda of understanding (MOUs)), instead of outcomes (measureable improvements in the objectives associated with core higher missions in teaching/learning, research/scholarship, service/problem solving).

The International Association of Universities’ (IAU 2012) call to reaffirm academic values in the internationalization of higher education received input during its drafting phase from a distinguished global panel of higher education internationalists. Among the concerns listed in the IAU report are: (1) The prevalence of English as the common language for a global system leading to cultural homogenization; (2) global competition among higher education institutions; (3) acceleration of brain drain; (4) large-scale recruitment of international students producing domestic backlash and unethical recruitment practices; (5) transnational education threatening developments of indigenous higher education capacity development; (6) rise of development of exclusive clubs of partner institutions, fuelled by rankings and thereby restricting broader institutional partnership formation; (7) asymmetries in the power and position of cross-border partner institutions with unbalanced advantage for the powerful.

Perhaps of equal importance, the IAU began its statement of purpose with “This document acknowledges the substantial benefits of the internationalization of higher education” (IAU 2012: 1), although adding that “potentially adverse unintended consequences” as well as benefits are playing out under an evolving concept of internationalization, and a changing nature of internationalization in the context of globalization.

These areas of concern are taken up again in Chapter 2 under a consideration of the rationales and motivations for internationalization and in Chapter 3 when considering the changing higher education organizational dynamics which are potentially altering basic institutional governance structures and value systems with clear implications for the conduct of international engagement.

Blending key concepts leading to comprehensive internationalization¹

In conversations about internationalization many terms are often used without clarity regarding their origins and meanings, or how they shape higher education internationalization—past, present and future. We sprinkle conversations with talk about, for example, globalization, internationalization, inter-cultural relations, comparative and cross-culture learning, mobility, cross border partnerships and networks, and other terms.

Has internationalization become a scatter shot of terms without an underlying coherency? Some hint that a few of the words are in opposition to one another, for example, “internationalization vs. globalization,” or that one is dying and another taking its place (e.g., globalization for internationalization). Others view one as good (internationalization fuels cooperation) and the other as bad (globalization fuels competition) (van Vught et al. 2002: 17).

A better understanding is to see such terms as distinctive but complementary foundation blocks for an enriched evolution of higher education internationalization. Peter Scott (2003) sees overlap, intertwining, and possible symmetries involving internationalization and globalization, and Jane Knight hypothesizes “Globalization is changing the world of internationalization” (Knight 2008: 1).

Roots

The ancient intellectual hubs named at the start of this chapter drew mobile scholars and the curious from afar; they were magnets for new ideas and the new ideas themselves became mobile across regional and political boundaries. Some of these hubs later were proto-universities or began as universities as in France, Bologna, and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and earlier) and later in the German research universities (Marginson and Rhoades 2002: 288). There are equivalents in twenty-first century knowledge communities that typically have a constellation of research universities as part of their core. Such hubs attract scholars and ideas from diverse places and cultures and typically intertwine multiple disciplines of thought and practice. Universities have a natural affinity for welcoming international perspective in their normal ...