TEXT III

HOW ARE WE DOING HIGHER EDUCATION
INTERNATIONALISATION?

Internationalisation has become a mantra in higher education. The knowledge economy is a global network, we are told, and universities across the world are encouraged to ‘plug in’ in various ways in order to reap the benefits of global interconnectedness, as well as to avoid the perils of parochialism.

Rankings are the new currency of quality, English the official language of science – there is a discourse of convergence that promotes the inevitability of a singular vision for university structure, function and aims.

In this sense, a unitary metric for quality would seek to impose one context upon another. The idea of a ‘world-class university’ is one way in which developmental contexts are ignored in order to export a particular model of university function.

The existence of these kinds of tensions around internationalisation opens the question: when we talk about measuring the value of internationalisation, whose internationalisation are we talking about?

From the rapid growth in internationalisation initiatives over the past two decades, we have seen a recent turn to questioning the ‘value’ of internationalisation projects. Universities are strapped for cash and have to make decisions about which international projects they want to invest in, and which projects provide the most value for institutions’ own aims and ambitions.

Internationalisation takes many forms, including co-taught courses and degrees, massive open online courses (MOOCs), collaborative research projects and student exchanges. Maintaining international partnerships can be costly, and many are, for various reasons, not particularly productive.

In the current context, many universities are reaching a ‘saturation point’ with their international partnerships and have now begun the process of strategic culling and reinvestment. The very idea of which international projects are valuable, and why, is up for grabs.

From a practical point of view, we can ask: where and by what means are international projects being valued? In this sense, attention is drawn towards those spaces where international projects are formed and promoted, and here we can examine their basis and logic.

These ‘spaces of internationalisation’ are everywhere and diffuse – from websites and organisations such as University World News and The Chronicle of Higher Education, to international development institutions such as the OECD, World Bank, national governments and even regional organisations such as UNESCAP (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.) or APAIE (Asia Pacific Association for International Education).

There are also international consortia that universities themselves control, such as Universitas 21, the Association of Pacific Rim Universities and the World Universities Network. These kinds of spaces are ‘listening posts’ as well as broadcasting centres through which ideas about internationalisation (and its aims and value.) are promoted and normalised.

What is the knowledge economy, and how should universities respond to it? What is a world-class university, is it desirable for every country, and how can a country acquire one? Should universities cooperate to advance alternate concepts and metrics of productivity and ‘innovation’ in order to change the playing field for all, or should they cooperate with select partners in order to secure competitive advantage against others in a global market?

Whether or not such questions are engaged by university heads or administrators, the answers will always emerge in practice through the way things are done. Whether a vice-chancellor rhetorically promotes holistic concepts of academic work is less materially significant than what the staff and faculty act out in the ways that they assess and articulate the value of their international projects.

Should universities be critics and consciences of society, should they critically evaluate the ‘ethic of global citizenship’, and how can these rationales be evidenced and articulated in these spaces?

Perhaps different kinds of metrics may be needed, or perhaps a different way of thinking altogether. Whatever possibilities might be explored, they will ultimately need to be storied and embedded into investment narratives that flow through these emerging international spaces.

For those concerned about internationalisation being conducted through exploitative and narrow competitive rationalities, and who wonder how we might instead mobilise an ethically grounded and pluralistic vision for internationalisation: let’s look to the spaces where the ‘value’ of internationalisation is currently being made, and then make it differently.

(Marc Tadaki. University World News. Edited. June 1st, 2013. Issue 274)