While higher education internationalization efforts have traditionally been associated with the expansion of study abroad experiences, the recruitment of international students and scholars, as well as the growth of area studies and language programs, the past decade has seen an increase in a variety of multi-disciplinary approaches to "global citizenship" programs. These programs typically involve international service learning, international internships, study abroad, and academic study, which all work to provide students with "global" experiences. The aim of these experiences is to enhance students’ academic, professional, and personal development and expand their horizons to prepare them to function effectively in the "global" world. Building on Andreotti’s concept of critical global citizenship, this study examines how universities institutionalize global citizenship in their curricula by analyzing program mission statements, goals, and curriculum materials. Focusing on degree- and certificate-granting global citizenship programs, the study examines the different ways of conceptualizing "global citizenship" and discusses their implications for social justice and equity at both the theoretical and programmatic levels.
This research, based in South Korea, compares the experiences of international students from within and outside the Asian region and then examines Chinese international students’ perceptions of discrimination. Utilizing the concept of neo-nationalism, survey findings revealed that Asian students reported greater difficulties and unfair treatment compared with students coming from Europe, North America, and other regions. The interviews further revealed anti-Chinese sentiments resulting in verbal aggression, challenges securing housing, discriminatory employment practices, and more.
The article examines how far the key Bologna objective of student mobility has been achieved in Portuguese higher education institutions and the main factors shaping it. It analyzes credit mobility, outgoing and incoming, between Portugal and Europe. Although mobility overall has risen, incoming mobility has grown faster, making Portugal an importer country. Portugal’s attraction power is explained mainly by its location, climate, and leisure opportunities. For outgoing mobility, employability is the main driver, explained by high unemployment and an uncertain home labor market. The main obstacle is financial, so country choice is increasingly based on proximity and living costs. Another important constraint is curricular inflexibility of Portuguese higher education institutions. The findings suggest that mobility in Portugal is far from reflecting Bologna’s policy goals, making the 2020 mobility target of 20% an ideal rather than an achievement.
Regarding higher education as a type of extended duration service, this article proposes a framework considering adjusted expectation, disconfirmation, satisfaction, and commitment in a conceptual model to explain international student loyalty. Employing a structure equation model to the sample data collected from 252 Vietnam overseas students studying in more than 15 countries, this study confirms the direct and indirect roles of satisfaction and commitment in student loyalty. Given the nature of extended duration service for higher education, another important finding is that adjusted expectation mediates the satisfaction–commitment relationship and subsequently affects student loyalty through commitment. An additional discovery is the encounter of a direct path from disconfirmation to adjusted expectation and to commitment, previously overlooked in prior studies. Our findings have implications for university and government strategies for retaining international students.
While past studies have merely focused on perceived risks that influence how students select the destination of international education best suited to their needs, research on perceived risk regarding post-purchase behavior remains limited. This study attempts to extend and redefine the perceived risk paradigm by uncovering the underlying elements of perceived risk among international students who are studying in Malaysian universities. Furthermore, it seeks to explore how demographic factors and risk reduction strategies can be applied to the perception of risk. Results for a sample group of 515 international students reveal that there are seven dimensions of perceived risk. Of all demographic factors tested, only place of residence (while studying in Malaysia) was found to influence perceived risk. Seeking information from the relevant authorities, proper savings plans, well organized study schedules, and advice from family members or peers are considered important to reduce students’ perceptions of risk. This implies that perceived risk theory could also be applied to the higher education context in the post-purchase behavior.
This article presents our findings of an exploration of students’ perceptions of multicultural group work when specific changes in pedagogy and methods of evaluation were made to include the processes students navigate, instead of merely the end product of their collaboration. Shifting demographics and increasing cultural diversity in higher education classrooms have presented the need for educators to rethink the formation, preparation, and evaluation of group work. This paper argues for learning to include the process of working with others rather than merely the product of group work. The findings from this study support previous literature advocating for more intentional approaches by providing evidence that changes to the preparation of groups, the formation of groups, and the evaluation of group work enhanced intercultural learning and improved the experience of working in a multicultural group for the majority of the participants.
This article examines the role of international service-learning (ISL) in facilitating undergraduates’ exploration of their conceptions of self (i.e., self-exploration). Conception of self refers to the use of values to define one’s role in a social/cultural group or organization and in society, and to determine current actions and future commitments. ISL is intentionally structured activities involving students in social services in overseas settings. Existing research underscores the importance of inducting students to other-oriented (showing care and empathy for others) values in facilitating their self-exploration through ISL. Interviews with 48 students in Hong Kong who participated in ISL revealed qualitative differences in students’ conceptions of self related to moral, cultural, and leadership values. The findings highlight the need to guide students to critically self-reflect on their values and actions, and build reciprocal relationships with others. Implications for international educators and service-learning practitioners to support students’ self-exploration in ISL are proposed.
This study examines the motivations of government-sponsored Kurdish students to study abroad and the reasons for choosing a particular country as their destination choice. Based on data we collected through an online survey and follow-up interviews, we compare demographic differences to explore the diversity among this cohort. The findings of the study show that motivations for overseas education are mainly related to career advancement and experiencing a good quality education. The study also shows that social agents have less influence on Kurdish students who tend to be older and more independent than most study abroad students.
As the number of international students studying at American universities continues to grow (Institute of International Education, 2014), campuses are increasingly becoming social spaces where the local, national, and international meet. Even though students’ identities may still be developing in college (Arnett, 2000) and their environment may influence their identity development (Erikson, 1968), little research has focused on the effects of this unique context on students’ identity formation. This study investigated the change in international and American student roommates’ ethnic and national identities over the course of one semester at three Midwestern universities. The qualitative results from semi-structured interviews with four undergraduate students suggest that these students were still grappling with their identities in different ways as they acted as discoverers, ambassadors, and negotiators and support a contextual approach to studying identity development in college students.
In the last decades, many higher education institutions have developed practices of internationalization of curricula aiming at developing intercultural competences among the non-mobile majority of students. Some of them have developed service-learning activities focusing on working with underserved communities from different cultures. This article shows some challenges on how intercultural competence of college students participating in a community-based mentoring program could be assessed. Outcomes are based on mixed-method research from a survey given to a treatment group that participated in a mentoring program (n = 95) and a control group (n = 71), and on 10 daily life stories from university students who were enrolled and participated in the mentoring program. Paradoxically, results show scarce differences between groups in Attitudes, Skills, Comprehension, and Desired Internal Outcomes in favor of the control group. But, on the other hand, some slightly significant differences in favor of the treatment group are observed with regard to Dominance Orientation and Symbolic Racism. These results bring new hypotheses and discussions helpful for scholars and administrators, especially coming from the learnings that students showed, particularly in qualitative data.
Many higher education institutions around the world are increasingly motivated to incorporate social media for pedagogical benefit. At the same time, many institutions are also attracting an ever-growing number of students from overseas countries. With this in mind, researching how the use of social media applications impact on international students’ experiences of new cultural and pedagogical contexts in the host country is relevant. This article is a systematic review of current literature on international students in higher education and their use of social media, focusing on both the personal and educational aspects of use. This analysis reveals three central themes related to the role of social web technologies for international students, that is creating bridges, boundaries, or hybrid spaces.
The growing importance of internationalization and the global dominance of English in higher education mean pressures on expanding English-taught degree programs (ETDPs) in non-English-speaking countries. Strategic considerations are necessary to successfully integrate ETDPs into existing programs and to optimize the effects of internationalization. Previous studies have proposed that innovation theory might explain effectively how to achieve this. This article examines the validity of innovation theory as a framework for understanding the institutionalization of ETDPs and identifies determining factors of successful outcomes. A case study was conducted in Dutch universities to identify factors influencing the institutionalization of ETDPs. A qualitative analysis of 15 interviews with academics demonstrated that an innovation theory-based framework can enable a systematic understanding of the institutionalization of ETDPs and can be effective in analyzing the influencing factors. Analyses utilizing this framework can contribute to strategic planning and policy-making for internationalization at national and institutional levels.
This article is based on the case study of the establishment of the campus of Tongji University (TU) in Florence, Italy, in 2014. This is the first offshore campus of a Chinese university in a Western country, showing an innovative trend, in particular concerning the legitimacy within the host sociopolitical and economic context. This article frames the case in the scenario of academic internationalization and Chinese higher education. The article analyzes the internationalization strategy of TU and the peculiar evolution of Florence as an "education hub," and gives a detailed account of the process leading to the establishment of the campus. Conclusions emphasize the innovative features related to Tongji’s choice to follow a delocalized platform approach and to network with local actors. This imposes a more complex view of the impact on the host region.
Discussed in this article are the different governance models in international student services in Canadian and Chinese universities. Informing this study were 39 international student service providers from 38 top Chinese universities while interacting with their Canadian counterparts in a professional development program in Canada. The derived comparative data serve to show that a reactive decentralized model is used in international student services in Canada, while practiced in China is a more centralized proactive model. Although both models are rooted in their own social and cultural contexts, mutual learning is possible to some extent. The article ends with some discussion about possible ways Canadian universities can borrow from the Chinese system.
Higher education is becoming increasingly internationalized, and the use of English as a medium of instruction for academic content has become commonplace in countries where English is not the native language. However, concerns are growing that the trend toward English-medium instruction (EMI) has accelerated without sufficient thought to the challenges of the implementation processes. This article discusses the challenges facing higher education institutions adopting EMI and proposes a typology for understanding them. Drawing on previously unpublished data from a study of universities in Japan, a context in which EMI is rapidly expanding, the article reconceptualizes prior understandings and identifies four categories of challenges: linguistic, cultural, administrative and managerial, and institutional. The categories are dynamic and context dependent, with institutional challenges playing a particularly prominent role in Japan. The proposed typology is offered as a conceptual framework for policy makers and program implementers designing effective implementation strategies for EMI.
In recent years, China has grown from an insignificant player to a major destination in the global market for international students. Based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews conducted in 2013, this study uses Shanghai as an example to examine international students’ experiences in China. It is found that China has become a niche market for international students due to the distinctiveness of the Chinese language and the country’s continuous economic growth. However, the considerably and consistently low levels of international students’ satisfaction with their study and living experiences show that China has not paid sufficient attention to improving its supply of higher education and other support services, which may threaten its sustainable growth in the international student market.
This article will critically analyze the global citizen concept in the world full of deep-rooted historical injustices and past and present structural inequalities. We will explore higher education’s (HE) engagement with the concept and whether this is polarizing HE and distracting its attention from the critical internationalization and transformational activities. The article will further explore whether it is worthwhile to spend time and resources on vague rhetoric and attempts to popularize buzzwords while the majority of students in the global South live in an unjust world. We will argue that the South needs to focus on development of globally competent graduates who are fully aware of their roles in the quest for a better tomorrow for their communities, countries, regions, and the world as a whole.
Universities’ aims for educating global citizens are rarely supported by a theoretical underpinning or evidence of outcomes. This study explored how international higher education experts conceptualize the global citizen or related terms representing the "ideal global graduate." A global notion of citizenship was accepted by the majority (24/26) of participants. Four participants used other terms to describe the "ideal global graduate," yet the knowledge, skills, and attitudes described by all participants were highly consistent and provide a close "fit" with the epistemology and ontology of moral and transformative cosmopolitanism. This evidence could suggest that terms describing the "ideal global graduate" are of less consequence than the underpinning values and mind-set they represent. This article suggests that the inevitable ambiguity surrounding the global citizen term could be tolerated. As such, future discourse and research could be directed toward organizational and pedagogical strategies that foster ethical and transformative thinking citizens and work-ready professionals.
This is a conceptually oriented article which questions established notions concerning the framing of international students in Anglo-Western universities through a literature review. Focusing largely on students from Confucian Heritage Cultures (CHC), and resulting from concerns regarding their level of participation, the literature is considered to have overly represented students’ English language competence and cultures of origin as causal factors. The body of the article explores the strands of this complex debate, reviewing both the literature which argues and questions the importance of English language competence, and that which proposes, challenges, problematizes, and ultimately reaffirms the view that cultural background is the dominant factor. The article argues that the literature has emphasized international students themselves, what makes them different, rather than their participation: Despite the often best intentions to the contrary, it has played to a deficit discourse, and has not always offered helpful guidance to the practice community. The article argues that the theoretical perspective of sociocultural theory, and, in particular, activity theory, offers a theorized understanding of participation and its relationship to learning often lacking in the literature, and enables a holistic understanding of participation in educational contexts. Moreover, as a motivational theory of learning, activity theory helps put into perspective the importance of such factors as language competence and culture of origin.
By clarifying what global learning is and how it is essential to higher education, this article considers what global learning provides for teaching, learning, and internationalization in higher education. It demonstrates how the global nature of knowledge and learning in the 21st century requires a re-definition of classrooms and learning environments that recognizes how knowledge production today is a collective, global, and diverse process. The article suggests a number of foundational principles for global learning, including relational approaches, reflection, contextualized knowledge, perspective shifting, disorientation, responsibility, and an ability to navigate the general and the particular. It concludes by revealing how a global learning framework has benefits beyond teaching and learning and how it can contribute to the deliberate internationalization of higher education.
This article explores how three different learning spaces could be appropriate for developing a sense of global citizenship among university students. We draw on an interview study conducted at the Universitat Politècnica of Valencia (UPV) between 2010 and 2012. The spaces analyzed were two electives devoted to international cooperation, a mobility program that took place mainly in Latin American countries and a student-led university group. We examined the three spaces in terms of expansion of capabilities and agency related to global citizenship and cosmopolitanism using a conceptual framework that synthesizes Nussbaum’s and Sen’s capability approach with Delanty’s critical cosmopolitanism to explore the limits and potentialities of those three spaces. Although the exploratory character of our study cannot allow us to generalize our findings, what we can affirm is each of these areas has the potentiality to enhance global citizenship but with nuances, differences, and complementarities. The electives appear to be good spaces for the critical learning capability, while international mobility is a strong enabler for narrative imagination capabilities. Students belonging to Mueve showed elements of these capabilities plus a very strong emphasis on agency, which does not occur in the other two learning spaces. Critical cosmopolitan process happened both in Mueve and Meridies. In the student-led group, this cosmopolitan process begins with the local, while in the internships was the global encounter that initiates a cosmopolitan reflection.
Unlike previous research on international students’ social support, this current study applied the concept of organizational support to university contexts, examining the effects of university support. Mainly based on the social identity/self-categorization stress model, this study developed and tested a path model composed of four key variables—university identification, university support, school-life satisfaction, and psychological stress. Results from structural equation modeling (SEM) supported most paths among those four variables, particularly presenting the critical roles of university support for international students’ psychological well-being.
This research studies Chinese students’ choice of transnational higher education in the context of the higher education market. Through a case study of the students in the transnational higher education programs of W University, the research finds that Chinese students’ choice of transnational higher education is a complicated decision-making that is influenced by push factors related to domestic higher education and overseas higher education, pull factors related to transnational higher education and student’s characteristics such as economic condition, academic aptitude, and future plans. Compared with domestic higher education and overseas higher education, transnational higher education is a second choice. It is being used by the majority of students as a tool to regain access to high-quality domestic higher education institutions and to gain access to overseas higher education. Currently, there exist information gaps between students and transnational higher education programs, which prevent students from making an informed decision when they choose a particular program.
The scholarly bias toward Western and English-speaking settings in the study of international education overlooks the experiences of international students in emerging education hubs in Asia. To redress this imbalance, this article offers insights into the crucial role of place in the study destination choices of a group of international postgraduate students currently enrolled at a Malaysian university. Findings from semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with 33 students indicated that place—and specifically the pull factors of the country of Malaysia—had a primary role in their choice of overseas university. More significant than the individual attributes of any one higher education institution, key social and cultural pull factors included the sense of Malaysia as a safe environment, shared cultural values with the students’ own background, the financial benefits derived from low tuition fees and low cost of living, proximity to the students’ home country as well as access to culturally important items such as halal and other dietary requirements. Understanding the significance of such national-level pull factors in study destination choice has important implications for the Malaysian government’s strategy of competing in the global market for international students.
Mobility of mainland Chinese students across national borders has become common worldwide; however, the underlying reasons that motivate these students to pursue postgraduation abroad and why these factors are influential are not sufficiently studied. By analyzing the results of a case study performed at three British universities, we examine the motivations of mainland Chinese students for choosing courses and study locations in the United Kingdom. Based on data we collected via questionnaires and interviews, we compare demographic differences to explore the diversity among this cohort. Our findings show that motivations for overseas education are related to conditions in China and abroad. In addition, older students and those in MA programs are more strongly influenced by a need to experience different cultures; younger students and those in MSc programs are more strongly driven by academics-related factors. Our findings have important implications for universities to develop more effective selection policies particularly for target mainland Chinese students.
This empirical study explores the current features of English-medium instructed master’s degree programs for international students (EMIMDPs-ISs) in Chinese higher education. Since the mid-2000s, a significant number of Chinese universities have proactively engaged in establishing English-medium instructed degree programs for international students. Despite this growing phenomenon, little attention has been paid to this unique knowledge model. This study first examines relevant Chinese government policies and practices, exploring the rationale for the enhancement of EMIMDPs-ISs in current Chinese higher education. It then addresses the findings offered by four leading comprehensive Chinese universities on the case studies of the eight EMIMDPs-ISs in Chinese higher education. The Chinese government and leading Chinese universities have been making an extensive effort to boost China’s soft power through the enhancement of international student education objectives. Through an investigation on eight EMIMDPs-ISs, this article identifies that eight EMIMDPs-ISs are well structured to widely disseminate "China’s excellence" and contribute to the enhancement of international education in China. Issues requiring further research and reflection include an examination of the current form of EMIMDPs-ISs (which was created as the "stand-alone" program for international students) as sufficient in meeting the ongoing demands of international students. Furthermore, conducting consecutive examinations of quality of education and advancing the integration of EMIMDPs-ISs into the regular higher education system would be crucial factors for the further development of EMIMDPs-ISs.
Although there seems to be a wide held assumption that transnational higher education programs have to be taught in English to be legitimate "international" programs, there are a few examples globally of international branch campuses that teach in languages other than English. Using seven institutional case studies from around the world, the research seeks to identify the motives of universities for establishing campuses abroad that deliver degree programs in languages other than English. The problems and issues experienced by these institutions are examined and their future prospects are considered. The main motives of the seven featured institutions for establishing campuses abroad were found to be altruistic rather than financial, but teaching in languages other than English presents advantages and disadvantages to institutions. In 2012, none of the seven institutions had more than 800 students although two institutions had been in existence for more than 16 years, indicating success at some level.
This study used a cross-sectional survey to examine the perceptions of undergraduate and graduate international students enrolled at a public university in the Midwest, regarding international students’ perspectives on how their university engages them as cultural resources, and how such engagement might impact students’ perceptions of the value they receive from U.S. higher education. The data suggest that international students are not actively engaged as cultural resources although they would like to do more to help others learn about their countries and cultures. The level of desired engagement as a cultural resource was the highest among South and Central American students, and the lowest among European students. The study identifies multiple areas of opportunities for higher education to facilitate international students’ active contributions to the university’s strategic goal of global engagement and internationalization while also positively impacting the manner in which international students perceive their higher education experience.
The study in one country to support the development of education in another is a regular event in the field of contemporary tertiary education, and it is likely to grow as developing countries accelerate their educational development projects and as Western universities seek international student funding. This article reports the case study of a specific teacher development project and examines the degree to which local development goals were met (or not) within an overtly international study experience, and uses the context and findings of the case to develop a discussion about fair academic trade. Because the stake holders in cross-national education are not univocal, it uses a number of different critical lenses to examine the findings and explore the complexities of the learning contract and its outcomes. It then offers a working model that nominates key elements for fair academic trade, and briefly reports on further collaborations that are growing out of the case study.
The concept of internationalization has been seen as a buzz word and container concept. The meaning of internationalization includes everything that relates to international, meanwhile internationalization is losing its meaning. This study takes a practical approach to searching for some clarification of this concept. During the period 2009-2011, 73 key actors in the field of internationalization at 16 Dutch higher education institutions (HEIs) were interviewed. Among the 14 elements identified by this study as constituting the concept of internationalization, many may be commonly know. However, the value of this study is that it ranks their significance and provides a sound base for further comparative studies in other countries. Moreover, this study compares and contrasts the differing interpretations of what the pursuit of internationalization means in research universities and universities of applied sciences and concludes that internationalization is pursued differently in the two sectors and clarifies the cause of these differences. These sectoral differences are important but have so far been rarely acknowledged in the internationalization literature. Finally, knowledge about practitioners’ perceptions of internationalization is not widely available in the education literature on internationalization. This study provides this knowledge based on the Dutch situation and argues that the current trend of theoretical development and general conceptualization in this field needs to recognize the actual practices, if our aim is to produce meaningful and feasible models/guidelines/frameworks that are recognizable by the practitioners.
Colleges and universities are increasingly internationalizing their curricular and cocurricular efforts on campuses; subsequently, it is important to compare whether internationalization at home activities may be associated with students’ self-reported development of global, international, and intercultural (GII) competencies. This study examined undergraduate students’ participation in study abroad and on-campus global/international activities within nine large public research universities in the United States. Framed within several intercultural development theories, the results of this study suggest that students’ participation in activities related to internationalization at home—participation in on-campus global/international activities such as enrollment in global/international coursework, interactions with international students, and participation in global/international cocurricular activities—may yield greater perceived benefits than study abroad for students’ development of GII competencies.
This article reports some of the findings of a longitudinal ethnographic research study on the intercultural transition experiences of 50 engineering students in a China–U.K. articulation program. It focuses on the interaction between these students and the U.K.-based cohort, mainly home students. The findings indicate that lack of suitable interventions at the initial stage, the competition for insufficient resources, double-language barriers, and different questioning behaviors led the Chinese and U.K. students to self-categorize themselves into "us" and "them." The separation has a negative impact on peer learning. This research suggests that integration in the class can be promoted through developing a low-stakes learning environment, enhancing intercultural competence and developing a common in-group identity as engineering students on the same program.
The number of international students in China is increasing rapidly, but their experiences in China remain largely unknown. This article reports an intensive longitudinal multiple case study that explores eight American students’ intercultural experiences and the impacts of such experiences on individual identity during their study in a Chinese university in 2010. Data come from monthly interviews and diaries that the students kept. Findings support Kim’s depiction of the processes by which intercultural identity emerges, notably the stress–adaptation–growth cycle and the concurrent processes of acculturation and deculturation. These findings reveal the journey of participants from cultural naivety to an emergent intercultural awareness and cultural critical capacity. Despite considerable ignorance and misunderstanding about China as an exotic "other" at the beginning of the program, all participants underwent some degree of cultural identity shift toward the more "open-ended . . . self–other orientation" of Kim’s "intercultural identity."
Previous studies on the field of education abroad have mainly focused on the factors influencing the mobility of international students from developing to developed countries and very few have been conducted to investigate the factors influencing the flow of international students to the Asia Pacific region. As a piece of country-specific research, this study, with an attempt to explore why and how international students travel to Taiwan for the purpose of study and to describe possible implications for the authorities and institutions offering higher education, is timely and worthwhile. A push–pull model is developed to identify the factors relating to the three-phase model of study abroad decision-making process, while the analytic hierarchy process method is used to examine the relative importance of these factors. The findings of this study suggest that policy makers and institutional administrators should focus on offering various kinds of scholarships for international students, designing multilingual websites for international students with different languages, promoting language training programs for international students, and designing student recruitment strategies tailored for the different study groups of international students at the government and the institution levels. This study is of particular significance because global competition between countries for international students and especially for the best among them will be more intense in the future.
The article examines improved marriage opportunities as an unexplored motivator for pursuing international education via U.S. graduate engineering degrees and stresses the need to centralize gender in analyzing academic mobility and international education. This interdisciplinary qualitative study explores how South Indian men and women’s experiences with international graduate education migration held gendered consequences for marriage and dowry. The participants show that the pursuit of a U.S. graduate engineering degree impacts a family’s social and financial status by improving student’s marriage options, including love marriages, arranged ones, and dowry. The research has implications for the recruitment and retention of Indian men and women engineers as graduate school migration overlaps with the socially preferred marriage timeline and it encourages policy makers and administrators to consider nontraditional motivators.
A strategic approach to internationalize learning in higher education institutions is to use the curriculum and classroom cultural diversity to create opportunities to broaden students’ intercultural perspectives, appreciate sociocultural variability in professional practice, and improve their intercultural interaction skills. There is no clear consensus, however, on how to "link the global classroom to the global workplace." The article examines an evidence-based approach to embed intercultural competency development in classroom teaching using an established intercultural resource (EXCELL) in an international human resource management course; a general communication course; a pharmacy course comprising only Saudi Arabian students; and a generic first year pharmacy course. Subsequently, stakeholder analyses with Business, Nursing, and Pharmacy academics and professionals led to the development of intercultural critical incidents for the curriculum. Strengths and limitations of the intercultural resource and recommendations for incorporating intercultural competency development in curriculum design in Business and Health disciplines are discussed.
One significant form of transnational higher education is the International Branch Campus (IBC), in effect an "outpost" of the parent institution located in another country. Its organizational structure is alignable with offshore subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs). The implications of organizational structure for academic freedom in teaching and research are discussed in this article. Drawing on examples from the literature, the investigation shows that over time as the IBC establishes its reputation locally, there is pressure for an increase in the academic freedom of academic staff. Our study suggests that over time and depending on the strategic choice of the parent university, the maturity of the offshore institution can be reflected in the increased academic freedom afforded to academic staff. In the interim, the limits to academic freedom and organizational constraints to intercampus collegiality can often lead to conflict.
Across the higher education sector international education has been described as experiencing a "crisis of identity." The recent proliferation of new terms advanced to label "internationalization," it has been suggested, represents little more than "tautology." Here, we address questions posed by de Wit regarding this phenomenon: "Why is it new labels are emerging?" "What do they mean?" "How are they used?" And, "will they advance the debate on the future of internationalisation?" We argue the phenomenon of renaming highlights a deep unease among scholars and points to the need for further theoretical consideration of the subject/agent nexus in the context of internationalization. First, with Strauss (1997), we argue the renaming phenomenon reveals more about those attributing the labels than that which they name. Second, drawing on positioning theory we argue renaming "internationalization" can be equated to reflexive positioning in the context of uneven distributions of power across contested storylines. As such, current efforts to rename "internationalization" are not necessarily tautological; rather, they could be integral to systematic changes in understandings, activities, dispositions, and rationales across the higher education sector.
This article suggests that as their internal labor markets become more multinational in scope, UK universities may acquire similar staffing characteristics to commercial multinational enterprises (MNEs). Comparing evidence from four UK universities with several surveys of MNEs it concludes that, although there are broad similarities in the challenges posed by international operations, there are also several key differences: universities lack the infrastructure to manage overseas staff requirements; have different approaches to career development; view the role of secondments differently; and have a different attitude to dealing with contingency. It argues that, as the size and variety of overseas campuses expand, the staffing models applied in the early days of establishment will not work. If overseas developments are to become core functions of UK universities, mobility portfolios based simply on ad hoc secondments and business travel, international staff recruitment, and electronic communications will not sustain the quality-driven business model being adopted by UK universities. The human resource ethos of the home institutions will also have to change.
In this article, we analyze the U.S. media discourse on Chinese international undergraduate students, the largest international student group since 2009. The discourse describes a market exchange, but reveals a struggle between: on the one hand, "a fair exchange"—between excellent Chinese students and world-class American liberal education; and, on the other hand, a "faltering exchange"—between ethically suspect and inassimilable Chinese students and a mercenary and possibly mediocre American university. We argue that this media reporting builds on long-standing seemingly contradictory images of an alluring China market and a threatening "Yellow Peril." We suggest that this media contest indexes the challenges of campus internationalization; just as the media questions real value on both sides of the exchange, so too is the campus encounter fragile and fraught.
Each country responds to internationalization differently and offers various interpretations of the concept. Thailand has incorporated the internationalization of higher education into its plans since 1990. This article aims to discuss the primary motivations of the government and of Thai universities in moving toward the goal of internationalization. The discussion focuses on so-called "international programs" in Thailand. Using English as the medium of instruction, these "international programs" have been widely offered in both public and private universities. The programs illustrate the internationalization of higher education in terms of its teaching function. Generally, government rationales involve both global economic trends and domestic socioeconomic forces. At the institutional level, stakeholders’ demands, needs of universities to generate fee income, and specific reasons drawn from domestic context were shown to be the main drivers of the international programs. Current interpretations of the efforts to internationalize higher education in Thailand show a quantitative growth in programs that only serve particular demographic groups. The substantial contributions that internationalization may offer to the higher education system have not been guaranteed.
The international activities of academic institutions dramatically expanded in volume, scope, and complexity during the past three decades. This expansion raised the need to monitor and assess the process at various levels and ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of internationalization. This study has two main aims: first, to present a model large-scale feasibility test for internationalization assessment through institutions’ websites; and second, to assess internationalization using the proposed methodology in teachers’ colleges in Israel. A website-based analysis was combined with in-depth interviews with colleges’ leadership. The use of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through systematic assessment of 21 teachers’ colleges in Israel. The effect of contextual variables such as colleges’ size, location (national periphery vs. center), and educational stream (Jewish-Secular, Palestinian-Arab, and Jewish-Religious) on internationalization expression and intensity are presented and discussed in detail. Internationalization levels were found to positively relate to the size of each institution and its proximity to Israel’s geographic center. In addition, Jewish-Religious and Palestinian-Arab colleges were found to possess lower general levels of internationalization in comparison to the Jewish-Secular stream. This article presents discussion and policy implications of the findings.
The intensity of internationalization has increased with an escalation in internationalization activities, leading to increasing student, program, and institutional mobility. In Malaysia, the internationalization of higher education in terms of student mobility has changed tremendously in the last two decades as the country has shifted from a sending to a receiving country. Policy-wise, the government has targeted to be a regional hub for higher education. The objectives of this article are to examine government policies, their rationales, and the response of public and private institutions toward these policies. The findings show that while there is also a new emphasis on research and knowledge generation, government policies essentially focus mainly on increasing inbound students to increase export revenues. Institutions’ response vary between public and private as the former have access to research funding from the government while the other is much more fee-dependent and therefore tend to focus on international students as an additional source of revenue but both view internationalization targets set by the government as an end by themselves.
This article examines the dynamics of brain circulation through a historical review of the debates over international migration of human capital and a case study on Chinese-Canadian academics. Interviews with 22 Chinese-Canadian professors who originally came from China provide rich data regarding the possibilities and problems of the contemporary global mobility. The findings indicate that brain circulation is possible in the case of Chinese-Canadian academics but that certain conditions and factors, especially some disparity issues associated with international migration of human capital, have prevented a more effective brain circulation from taking place. This article argues that addressing these disparity issues will be an indispensable step toward fostering an effective global human capital circulation and knowledge exchange.
This article tracks the emergence, maintenance, and evolution of a positive intercultural relationship between a multilingual international student from Vietnam and a monolingual local Australian student in their first year at university. The literature overwhelmingly suggests that in institutions where English is the language of instruction, monolingual local students rarely mix with international students who are not fully proficient in English. This dyad thus provided fertile ground for exploring the development of an unusual intercultural student relationship. Narrative analysis explores the extent to which individual agency and the institutional environment coshaped this relationship over time and in various contexts. In the context of the internationalization of the tertiary education sphere, this study offers a prototypical case highlighting affordances and constraints that may influence the development of productive and amicable intercultural relationships on diverse university campuses.
In recent decades many East Asian countries have initiated ambitious policies to increase their global prominence as education hubs. This article examines the development of Taiwan’s international student recruitment policies from 1950 to 2011, exemplifying the case in a non-Western, non-English speaking context. While Taiwan’s case is distinctive with the dominance of noneconomic factors in shaping the state policy orientation and agendas, the strong role of the state and the Confucian model of higher education constitute a valid example of developments in the internationalization of higher education in East Asia. The analysis further shows that the intertwining forces of localization, nationalization, and globalization influenced the policy development throughout three stages of the trajectory. These findings demonstrate the transformationalist viewpoint of globalization and support the "glonacal agency approach" proposed by Rhoades and Marginson claiming that local, national, and global domains are simultaneously significant in understanding globalization and higher education.
This analysis examines the preparatory and reflective online rhetoric available to potential and past academic travelers at the university level. Utilizing Martin Heidegger’s (1977) notion of the ways in which technological processes "enframe" human experiences, the article scrutinizes the visual and verbal rhetoric found on the websites of the three U.S. universities that sent the most students abroad during the 2009-2010 school year. The analysis provides a critical look at the websites’ (over)emphasis on "firsthand" cultural immersion, promises for transformative experiences, tendencies for suggesting cultural homogeny, and dichotomies in depictions of skin color. Moreover, the analysis observes the ways in which program administrators perpetuate a specific experience by encouraging study abroad alumni to provide particular types of testimonials to be uploaded to the website (a practice often complicated by prize offers). Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.
In many countries and regions around the world international students now weigh up the potential advantages and disadvantages of undertaking their higher education at an international branch campus rather than at a home campus located in a traditional destination such as the United States or United Kingdom. The aim of the research is to identify the criteria used by prospective students to evaluate the images they hold of international branch campuses and to investigate the impact of these assessments on students’ attachment to institutions. The study involved 407 students studying at nine international schools in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was found that information and opinions gained through personal relationships and the media explained over half of the variability in the attachment/membership intentions of prospective students. It was also discovered that students evaluate international branch campuses using information related to both the local branch and the home campus. The implications of the findings for international branch campuses are discussed.
Increased international student mobility worldwide necessitates studying its impact on students, particularly for domestic students who have been neglected in research but who are greater in number than mobile students. It is also important that higher education institutions facilitate domestic students’ relationships with international students and promote their international education. Using mixed methods, this study examined the effect of institutional intervention to promote domestic students’ interaction with international students and its impact on intercultural competence in Korean higher education. The results of a path analysis showed that campus programs involving Korean and international students had a positive and direct effect on Korean students’ interaction with international students, and a positive and indirect effect on their intercultural competence. Interview findings also revealed that Korean students’ interactions with international students enabled their meaningful intercultural experience and influenced their future educational and career decisions. Implications of this study for higher education internationalization efforts, the contact hypothesis, and the larger host society are discussed.
The internationalization of tertiary education has given rise to student mobility of industrial proportions and affects and is affected by, national economies. Currently British universities are host to the second highest number of international students in the world; the proportionality of international students in the student body in UK higher education (HE) is also the second highest globally.Over the decades the British government has declined to link policy and practice on international student issues, rather, has taken a stance which presented a view of the country’s role in overseas student affairs that reflected imperialist, postcolonial, international, and global perspectives, invariably mirroring the political complexion of the day. The article highlights a number of ways in which policies designed to control international student numbers has had the effect of creating conditions in which the domestic students have in turn been privileged and disadvantaged. Using a historical perspective to interrogate former policy initiatives, it concludes by reflecting on what the impact of present policies are likely to be for future developments of the sector.
Intercultural competence is an increasingly desired and necessary skill in a globalized world. While competence is a complex concept to define and assess, this study examines specific dimensions of the intercultural learning of students in the School of International Studies (SIS) at the University of the Pacific. Students undergo both an interdisciplinary, international curriculum and study abroad for at least a semester, taking courses on cultural adaptation before they leave and reenter. When they return from abroad, changes in their intercultural sensitivity are assessed through both direct (reflection papers and the reporting of "critical incidents") and indirect methods (use of the Intercultural Development Inventory [IDI]). We find substantial advances in intercultural sensitivity for these students, which is largely consistent across assessment methods. On average, their IDI scores change by 19.78 points, which is both a significant change for these students and is significantly different from university students who have not been a part of the international curriculum or have not studied abroad.
Competency-based training and training packages are mandatory for Australian vocational education and training (VET). VET qualifications are designed to provide learners with skills, knowledge, and attributes required for Australian workplaces. Yet, toward the end of December 2011, there were 171,237 international student enrolments in the Australian vocational education sector. VET currently ranks second behind the university sector by volume of international student enrolments in Australia. The flow of international students into Australian vocational education, their diverse learning characteristics, and their different acquired values have created new challenges as well as possibilities for teachers to transform their pedagogic practices and contribute to reshaping the pedagogy landscape in vocational education. Drawing on interviews with 50 teachers from VET institutes in three states of Australia, this article discusses the emergence of international vocational education pedagogy that enables international students and indeed all learners to develop necessary skills, knowledge, and attributes in response to the new demands of the changing workplace context and global skills and knowledge mobility. This article addresses a number of important issues concerning the interrelationship of international pedagogy and learner-centered education, notions of productive and inclusive pedagogies, transnational skills mobility, cultural diversity, and internationalization within the context of the Australian VET sector. Finally, the significance of these issues to educational providers and teachers across different educational levels and national contexts is discussed.
Full-degree mobility from Western countries is a topic that has been little researched. Existing literature tends to be normative; mobility is seen as an advantage per se. In this article it is questioned whether mobility is an advantage when investigating degree mobility and employability of students from the Nordic countries. Results show that students who undertake a full degree abroad constitute a selected group regarding social origin and "mobility capital." Overall, the employability of mobile and nonmobile students is fairly similar, and there is little evidence that degree mobility enhances employability. But the mobile degree students are more likely to hold international jobs in the domestic labor market; hence mobility has an impact on "horizontal" career opportunities. Degree mobility implies a risk of brain drain, and the authors find that a substantial proportion of students from Finland, Denmark, and the Faroe Islands stay abroad after graduation. Norwegian and Icelandic students are far more likely to return to their home country. It is suggested that this pattern is not only due to labor market opportunities but also due to the structure of public support schemes. Generous support systems encourage a larger number of students to go abroad, not only the most dedicated. Widened participation is seen to result in more students returning to their country of origin.
While education abroad programs are part of an emphasis to prepare university students to be more interculturally competent, one criticism is that programs often send students overseas without adequate preparation. This study aims to explore what students have learned from education abroad programs and how their stories might reveal the need for predeparture and postdeparture training. Using the concept of intercultural competence from the field of intercultural communication, this study analyzes reflective papers of 18 students who have returned from education abroad programs. The results indicate that while experiences abroad have an obvious impact on students’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills, they do not necessarily help to develop deeper levels of intercultural competence. This study concludes that immersion into the culture alone may not increase intercultural competence. Ways in which intercultural communication courses can leverage the students’ experiences in education abroad programs are also discussed.
As more international doctoral students flow into science and engineering departments in American research universities, a marked shift on the demographic composition of doctoral student bodies has been witnessed. Using a dataset combining a survey of science and engineering department chairs with the latest department evaluation information, this study reveals that international students are overrepresented in least prestigious departments and underrepresented in top programs. Research findings suggest doctoral cohorts’ career prospects are stratified by the representation of international students, department prestige and academic fields. The doctoral cohorts with more international students are more likely to head for less research-oriented faculty appointments and less likely to take postdoctoral positions. The cohorts minted out of prestigious departments demonstrate a greater success in landing research-oriented faculty positions. Relative to the cohorts in life science, the cohorts in engineering and physical sciences are presented with different job opportunities. The study concludes with a discussion of research findings and policy implications.
The goal of this study was to assess the longitudinal effectiveness and impact of study abroad programs on teachers’ content knowledge and professional perspectives. The study focused on a recent Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad to Botswana (summer 2011) and compares results with an earlier Fulbright-Hays program to Singapore and Malaysia (summer 1995). Data were obtained through multiple objective and open-ended instruments administered before departure and several months after participants returned to the United States. The results suggest significant trends and outcomes. Quite clearly, the knowledge base of the participants increased as a result of the project, though much of the factual material might have been obtained without leaving home. However, it was within the qualitative and affective domains that the most intriguing results occurred. Participants’ perspectives on their own personal and professional development, cultural awareness, teaching methodologies, and choice of curricular content indicated sustained positive growth throughout the program.
When colleges and universities set up outposts such as international branch campuses (IBCs) in foreign countries, the literature suggests that the success of that outpost can be tied to its ability to build its own legitimacy. This article investigates the process of legitimacy building by IBCs through identifying who IBCs view as their salient stakeholders and analyzing how IBCs legitimize their international presence to those stakeholders in the home country, host country, regional and global environments. Data are drawn from 45 branch campus mission statements collected from university websites. Findings indicate that IBCs embrace a global identity to legitimize themselves to both home country and host country stakeholders. Orientation to the IBC’s home country is utilized to signify quality and indicate the brand of education offered in the host country, whereas orientation to the host country is framed as furthering host country development. The findings suggest that there may be a lack of deep integration of the internationalization experience into IBC curricula and the home campus’s organizational learning. Furthermore, some IBCs have not prioritized local development needs in the host country.
A common assumption is that students prefer to work together with students from similar cultural backgrounds. In a group work context, students from different cultural backgrounds are "forced" to work together. This might lead to stress and anxiety but at the same time may allow students to learn from different perspectives. The prime goal of this article is to understand how international and home students from different cultural backgrounds build learning and work relationships with other students in and outside their classroom using an innovative quantitative method of Social Network Analysis in a pre-post test manner. In Study 1, 50 Spanish and 7 Erasmus economics students worked in self-selected teams. In Study 2, 69 primarily international students in a postgraduate management program in the United Kingdom worked in randomized teams. The results indicate that in Study 1 learning ties after 14 weeks were significantly predicted by the initial team division and friendship ties. The seven international students integrated well. In Study 2, learning ties after 14 weeks were primarily predicted by the team division, followed by initial friendship ties and conational friendships. Although international students developed strong (multinationality) team learning relationships, international students also kept strong links with students with the same cultural background. As the initial team division had an 8 times stronger effect on learning ties than cultural backgrounds, these results indicate that the instructional design of team work has a strong influence on how international and home students work and learn together.
This article examines web comments written by Chinese learners on online open courses that are originally produced by leading universities in the United States and United Kingdom and are later introduced to China with Chinese translation. It applies the thematic discourse analysis strategy to classify the comments into themes to explore the patterns of studying behaviors of the Chinese learners. The analysis reveals that open access as the concept and practice of educational resources sharing is overwhelmingly supported. With regard to open course content, the Chinese are more interested in course materials that echo their daily experience than in courses that merely deliver knowledge and skills. A debate on the social effect of foreign open courses on Chinese ideology is discussed.
This study explores responses to rankings from a group of staff working as education partnership facilitators for a professional intermediary organisation, the British Council. The study adopts an activity systems perspective from which to view the contexts in which rankings are encountered and the range of practices used to reduce tensions created by rankings, or reconcile their effects. The article illustrates how rankings have become embedded as a new form of infrastructure in the international education "context of practice"; as a tool (to enable benchmarking); as a form of exchange (to demonstrate credentials to customers and stakeholders); and as a division of labour (in the task of assessing value across national borders). The range of responses to rankings displayed by respondents in this study demonstrates a significant space that has been created for interpretation and reconstruction of meaning. The implications of this analysis for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers are discussed.
The political events of the last decade and the Arab Spring have made it more important than ever for Americans to understand the language, culture, and history of the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. Study abroad is one important method that can significantly increase American students’ understanding of the Arabic language and the culture of MENA. During the past decade, the number of U.S. undergraduate students in the MENA region has increased dramatically, but there is still a great need for growth and understanding in this area. This research analyzes data from a cross-sectional survey and focus groups of U.S. undergraduate study abroad students to investigate the motivations, attitudes, and aspects of human capital that influence study abroad destination choice. These findings provide insight for policy makers, faculty, and international educators who want to expand students’ options for study abroad and for students who are considering whether this avenue is right for them.