International Faculty in Higher Education

Comparative Perspectives on Recruitment, Integration, and Impact

Maria Yudkevich, Philip G. Altbach, Laura E. Rumbley, Maria Yudkevich, Philip G. Altbach, Laura E. Rumbley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781134857739
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In an interconnected and globally competitive environment, faculty mobility across countries has become widespread, yet is little understood. Grounded in qualitative methodology, this volume offers a cutting-edge examination of internationally mobile academics today and explores the approaches and strategies that institutions pursue to recruit and integrate international teachers and scholars into local universities. Providing a range of research-based insights from case studies in key countries, this resource offers higher education scholars and administrators a comparative perspective, helping to explain the impact that international faculty have on the local university, as well as issues of retention, promotion, salaries, and the challenges faced by these internationally mobile academics.

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International Faculty in 21st-Century Universities

Themes and Variations

Philip G. Altbach and Maria Yudkevich

In the era of globalization, it is hardly surprising that growing numbers of academics are working outside of their home countries. Universities are themselves increasingly globalized—they are perhaps the most globalized of all prominent institutions in society. Even though the global percentage of international academics is small—there are no accurate statistics and there are a variety of challenges in defining international academics—this group is quite important. We broadly define international faculty as academics who hold appointments in countries where they were not born and/or where they did not receive their first postsecondary degree. In most cases, they are not citizens of the country in which they hold their academic appointment. They are drivers of international consciousness at universities, they are often top researchers, and in some countries they constitute a large percentage of the academic labor force.

Although there is very little research on this group of academics, they seem to cluster into four broad categories. A small but highly visible group of international faculty holds appointments at top research universities around the world, but especially in the major English-speaking countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, and to some extent the United Kingdom. A second group is employed by mid-range or upper-tier universities in a small number of countries that, as a matter of policy due to their size, geographic location, or specific perceived needs, appoint international faculty—such as Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore. A third group teaches at universities in countries where there is a shortage of local staff—such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, some African countries, and a few others. Here, international academics are frequently hired to teach lower-level courses and often come from Egypt, South Asia or other regions and frequently from nonprestigious universities. The fourth category, which overlaps the first three, consists of academics who immigrated from one country to another and obtained citizenship in that country—in some ways they may be considered ‘pure’ international faculty, while in other ways they are not. A final group includes academics who have obtained their doctorates abroad, and perhaps have had a postdoc abroad, and continue on to make their careers abroad as well. Some international faculty can be found in virtually every country in the world.

Why Hire International Faculty?

The rationales for hiring international academics vary considerably. They are seen as key contributors to university internationalization because they bring experiences of other academic systems and perhaps different paradigms of research and teaching. Hiring ‘high-profile’ international faculty may be a quick way to boost research productivity because these professors can attach their research profiles to their new institutions and, of course, contribute their work once they are hired. A small number of universities want to be fully international in research and teaching, and therefore have a policy to hire faculty members internationally, as well as to recruit an international student population; these institutions recruit faculty and often students without reference to nationality. International faculty may help foster institutional reform or innovation because of their experiences in other countries. Perhaps the most common reason for hiring international faculty is that they fill gaps in teaching and research at a university. Many countries have severe shortages of local academics and must look outside for needed personnel. Without question, international academics are a central part of the global higher education environment of the 21st century.

Definitional Dilemmas

Who are international faculty? As noted, we are using the broadest possible definition—individuals who were not born in and/or do not have their first degree from a postsecondary institution in the country where they have their primary academic appointment—and the appointment must be regular, full-time status. There are many other definitions in common use around the world. Many countries use visa or citizenship categories to define international faculty. For example, Saudi Arabia considers anyone who is not a Saudi citizen international faculty, no matter where they may have been educated—and it is very difficult to obtain Saudi citizenship. The United States has a complexity of visa categories and several ‘pre-citizenship’ categories, but citizenship is relatively easy to obtain—and American citizens are not considered international faculty—thus making it impossible to calculate the true number of international faculty in American universities. Canada defines international faculty as those who have received their advanced degrees in another country and were born outside of Canada because obtaining Canadian citizenship is also relatively easy. Other countries have other ways of defining international faculty. And many simply leave definitions up to individual universities.

There are a variety of academic appointments that, in some countries, are considered faculty level (and therefore potentially occupied by ‘international faculty’) which fall outside the definition we have endeavored to stick to in this study. For example, in some places, postdoctoral appointments or research fellows have faculty status. In others, lecturers or even graduate fellows working on a doctoral degree are counted. For the purposes of this discussion, these categories are not considered international faculty, although they may bring significant international experience and orientation to the university. Similarly, international master’s and doctoral students, who may play a significant internationalization role in universities, are not considered international faculty, although some of them may do some teaching and most (particularly at the doctoral level) are involved in research.

Some countries or universities, especially those eager to internationalize their institutions or increase their status in the rankings, hire international faculty on a part-time basis—these individuals typically hold their main appointment in one country and spend part of the academic year in another country. In some cases, these part-time or occasionally ‘honorary’ appointments are made specifically to produce better statistics for research or internationalization—thus boosting ranking or other measures. Our definition would not permit such part-timers to be included as international faculty.

Internationalization and International Faculty

Many countries and institutions see employing non-native academics as a key part of internationalization strategies. Indeed, international faculty are often seen as the ‘spearhead’ of internationalization. Further, increased numbers of international faculty are seen as a key marker of internationalization by the global rankings and often by ministries and other policy makers within countries.

It is assumed that international faculty will bring new insights to research, teaching, and perhaps to the ethos of the university. But, of course, the effectiveness of the contributions of international faculty depends on the organizational arrangements of the university, the expectations on both sides for contributing to internationalization, and other factors. While there do not seem to be many available data, international faculty are often not effectively integrated into the internationalization programs of many universities. They teach in their subject areas but are asked to do little else for the university. And in many cases, the lack of familiarity of international faculty with the norms and perhaps the politics of the local academic system and institution may limit their participation in governance and other university functions.

International faculty in non–English-speaking environments are often key contributors to increasing the number of English-taught courses and degree programs, and in general essential for boosting the English-language orientation of the university. The use of English for both teaching and research is seen as a key factor in internationalization, and thus international academic staff who have competence in English have an advantage over others in obtaining appointments.

Many countries and universities have increased the number of international faculty as a matter of institutional and sometimes national policy. Government-funded excellence programs or related initiatives often include funding to hire international academics. This is the case in the Russian 5–100 program and in Japan’s new “Global 30” effort, among others. In some cases, universities choose cheaper and lower-quality options in terms of recruitment to increase formal indicators of internationalization as much as possible. These programs also include plans to expand the numbers of English-taught courses and degrees, as well as an upgrade in foreign-language competence of professors and students. In other words, in non–English-speaking countries, the expectations for international faculty are higher as they include both increasing excellence in teaching and research, and contributing to the creation of an English-speaking environment for both domestic faculty and students.

At the same time, bringing international faculty into the environment where the local national language (other than English) is dominant creates evident challenges for their successful integration into the academic and social life of the university, and thus affects the future prospects for their careers in the university and the country.

National Policies Relating to International Faculty

Some countries and universities welcome international faculty, and even implement initiatives to attract them. Others are much less welcoming. Some universities have stated policies encouraging the recruitment of international faculty. Harvard University, among a few others around the world, has a specific goal that each faculty member hired should be the best globally, without regard to citizenship or national origin. Universities in Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Singapore have as a goal to hire about half of their faculty on the international market. A growing list of countries has national—and, in many cases, institutional—policies to hire internationally in an effort to internationalize the academic profession, increase overall English competence and offer degree programs in English, improve research productivity, and—not incidentally—improve placement in the global rankings.

More than a few countries, perhaps surprisingly, place various obstacles in the way of hiring international faculty. Many have extremely complicated and bureaucratic procedures relating to obtaining work permits, procedures concerning security and other issues, and visa regulations, which are sometimes combined with numerical quotas relating to specific job categories, sometimes including academic and research positions. In some cases, bureaucratic and other procedural and legal barriers at the national level are a serious detriment to appointing international academics, and may restrict the number and the kinds of appointments available. Another problematical example is the treatment of spouses or partners when negotiating complex visa categories, work permit arrangements, and the like.

There are also examples of national policies that are aimed against international academic appointments. India, until quite recently, had national regulations that prevented offering permanent academic appointments to noncitizens, and even now only a handful of foreigners can be found in Indian universities. Canada, from time to time, has imposed “Canada first” hiring policies, under which universities have had to painstakingly prove that each individual international appointment was not taking the place of a comparably qualified Canadian. However, in general, Canada has been welcoming to international faculty—and, as mentioned, it is relatively easy to obtain citizenship. It has been noted earlier that Saudi Arabia offers only term contracts to international academics. Although the United States is quite open to hiring international academics, the bureaucratic hurdles of work permits and immigration are generally problematical and sometimes insurmountable (Hutchison, 2016).

While it is certainly true that many countries have opened their borders to highly qualified professionals, including professors, the practical challenges of rules and regulations, as well as nationalistic policies, sometimes make hiring and supporting international academics difficult. Overall, however, national policies, both in terms of bureaucratic arrangements and an orientation toward recognizing the importance of international professors, have moved in a more welcoming direction in recent years, perhaps recognizing the inevitability of globalization. At the same time, as noted earlier, the practicalities, both at the level of government regulations and bureaucracy and in terms of integrating international faculty into local academic life, remain significant almost everywhere.

In some countries or individual universities, the same procedures are used for recruiting both domestic and international faculty. However, in countries with a tendency toward academic inbreeding and/or with weak national academic markets, different procedures for these two streams of faculty emerge. When inbreeding is prevalent due to an inadequate supply of high-quality academics in-country, universities have to set different standards for local faculty and international hires. In these cases, international recruitment is used to foster competition within the university and to contribute to the long-term strategy of eliminating inbreeding (Yudkevich, Altbach & Rumbley, 2015a).

Different conditions often correspond to different contract arrangements, including prominent variations in salaries that often provide significantly better remuneration to international faculty than is provided to local faculty, which in turn may lead to social tensions between these two groups of faculty. Special effort is needed to prevent these tensions and create productive conditions for collaboration between people hired locally and those attracted from the international market.

Institutional Policy and International Academics

Universities around the world are increasingly committed to hiring international academics. While for many academic institutions hiring foreign academics requires some modification in policy and orientation, there is noticeable movement toward more welcoming policy and practice (Helms, 2015). For some universities, arrangements for appointments, promotion, and career advancement norms were developed for citizens and must be modified for international staff. Further, in some cases, international academics require special treatment—for example, when they hold appointments at universities in their home countries as well as positions in a foreign country.

In some cases, distinguished international academics are treated as super-professors, earning higher salaries and having extra privileges. At times, although beneficial to the top scholars themselves and the hiring institutions, such arrangements can cause resentment among local faculty who do not have such advantages. In other cases, international academics may be treated as second-class academic citizens—without access to standard appointments, barred from academic governance, and often teaching more than domestic faculty.

Hiring international faculty is very expensive in many countries and is associated with some financial issues. Indeed, for universities to offer tenure-track and tenured positions to their faculty, they must be able to keep their long-term monetary commitments to these individuals and have a stable source of funding for this type of hiring arrangement. The inability of a university to find such resources results in practical restrictions in relation to long-term contracts in favor of short-term contracts (Khovanskaya, Sonin &Yudkevich, 2008). This problem is aggravated even more in times of financial crisis and instability of the local national currency. For example, in Russia, whereas local faculty care more about purchasing power parity, international faculty think more about the local currency exchange rate—since many spend their earnings in their home countries—and demand that their salaries be adjusted to levels that are competitive on the global academic market. Again, such financial obligations may be very expensive for a university to meet, and also difficult to predict.

Teaching, Research, or Service

Although international faculty are hired for different functional purposes, teaching and research are the dominant activities. In some countries and universities, international faculty are considered a source of high-quality teaching and are expected to set properly ‘international’ (and sometimes innovative) standards with respect to teaching and the curriculum. Many universities seek to provide their students with some international experience and better prepare them for the global job market. A good way to do so for a large number of students is to expose them to teaching in English by international faculty in the core curriculum or in selective parts of the educational program. Evidence shows that such experiences, as well as participating in multicultural classrooms where they face diverse teaching techniques and get their first taste of learning and interacting in a non-native language, may be very important for students (Jones, 2009).

In many countries, international faculty are considered an important and powerful source of improving university research performance, and thus they are recruited mainly to do research. In such cases, universities may even be ready to waive teaching requirements and to offer a prominent international scholar low or even no teaching loads—a highly attractive proposition for scholars who want to concentrate on research. International faculty may improve the university’s research performance in several ways. This can be done directly, by adding high-quality publications to the university’s publication record in key international journals. In academic systems where faculty are mostly oriented to local journals and outlets, the effect of additional publications beyond the local context can be substantial. In such systems, the international faculty can share their expertise in publishing in international journals and, more broadly, share their research expertise, both as mentors and as collaborators, with local faculty. Since international faculty with some considerable external international experience are more ‘visible’ and better connected with the broader international community, their work may also become more widely circulated and more prominently cited. Finally, prominent international research faculty often collaborate with local faculty, thus providing valuable mentoring as well as improved international visibility for local professors and researchers.

International faculty may bring important experience in governance and administration to the university; thus, they may provide new ideas and insights into existing routines and suggest innovative ways to tackle administrative problems. Attracting international faculty to administrative duties may be a good idea, especially for academic systems that suffer from inbreeding or a general lack of external experience. However, involving international faculty in administration is not widely practiced due to several limiting factors. These factors include language barriers—it is difficult to take part in ad...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 International Faculty in 21st-Century Universities: Themes and Variations
• 2 The Long-Term Mobility of International Faculty: A Literature Review
• 3 International Faculty in a Brazilian University: International Trajectories in a Nationalized System of Scientific Production
• 4 International Faculty in Canada: Recruitment and Transition Processes
• 5 International Faculty in Two Top-Tier Chinese Universities: One Country, Two Types of Internationals
• 6 Integrating International Academic Staff into the Local Academic Context in Lithuania and Estonia
• 7 Recruitment and Integration of International Faculty at German Universities: The Case of the University of Konstanz
• 8 International Faculty Recruitment in Kazakhstan: The Case of Nazarbayev University
• 9 Attraction, Integration, and Productivity of International Academics in Mexico
• 10 International Academic Recruitment in a Turbulent Environment: The Case of the Higher School of Economics in Russia
• 11 International Faculty in Saudi Arabia’s Universities
• 12 International Academics in Africa: The South African Experience
• 13 International Faculty in Higher Education: Common Motivations, Disparate Realities, and Many Unknowns
• Contributors
• Index