The position of higher education and its international dimension in the global arena are more dominant than ever before, says Dr Hans de Wit, editor of Journal of Studies in International Education. In a 2006 International Association of Universities survey, 73% of institutions gave internationalisation high priority, 23% medium priority and only 2% low priority. But despite an increase in studies on internationalisation, research on the topic is struggling to find a disciplinary, conceptual or methodological 'home'.


As the internationalisation of higher education has grown in importance, a new group of activities and related terms has emerged, De Wit said in a paper for a conference on 'Enhancement of Knowledge on Higher Education and its Dissemination: Imperative for policy and practice', held at Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, last month.

They are a consequence of the impact of society's globalisation on higher education and relate to the cross-border delivery of education - borderless education, education across borders, global education, offshore education and international trade in educational services.

"Internationalisation of higher education is changing," said De Wit in his paper, A Research Agenda on Globalisation and Internationalisation in Higher Education.

"Higher education is increasingly influenced by globalisation but is also becoming a more active actor in globalisation. Internationalisation of higher education is one of the ways a country and institution respond to the impact of globalisation, but also the internationalisation of higher education is an agent of globalisation."

Globalisation and higher education are linked to each other in three ways, De Wit wrote. First, there is increasingly unmet demand for higher education worldwide. But while in the developing world demographic trends have fuelled enormous demand that cannot be met by local institutions, obliging countries to send students abroad, in many developed countries there is an ageing population and thus a shortage of students, so institutions are absorbing students from developing countries.

"Demographic trends are very important and they are changing constantly around the world," he said. The impacts of globalisation have also driven demand for new programmes, for instance in interdisciplinary studies and information technology, as higher education has responded to the changing needs of industry and society and pressures for lifelong learning.

Second, there has been growth in the number and types of new higher education providers. Outside the US, where there has always been a combination of public and not-for-profit private institutions, public universities have dominated in many countries.

"But more and more private and for-profit universities are entering the higher education arena at the national level, for instance in Latin America, but increasingly also on an international scale," De Wit said.

Third, new and innovative methods of delivering higher education have emerged. While universities used to be bound to a country, were subsidised by government and delivered traditional classes, now there is e-learning, universities are setting up franchise operations abroad and they are involved in joint degree programmes.

"One can see a whole new area evolving with a new group of terms, such as transnational education and cross-border education: first there was primarily cross-border movement of people and now also cross-border movement of programmes and institutions," he said.

As one of the drivers of innovation in higher education, internationalisation requires a new research agenda to help universities shape this innovation.

De Wit cited Barbara Kehm and Ulrich Teichler, in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Studies in International Education, who found that research on international dimensions of higher education had expanded in recent years (along with internationalisation itself), and had become more multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. They wrote:

"The thematic range, the disciplines and research domains contributing to, and the modes of inquiry have become broader. Altogether, research on internationalisation in higher education has become more strongly intertwined with research on other aspects - a fact that reflects the increasing mainstreaming of international aspects of higher education."

Kehm and Teichler, both professors at the International Centre for Higher Education Research at the University of Kassel, also observed there had been a broadening of the field and a rapidly changing research discourse characterised by a growing number of ambitious studies. But "a large segment of studies is so pragmatic and so much driven by practical concerns that we cannot easily identify a well-established field demarcated by a certain degree of quality".

According to De Wit, in a presentation earlier this year to a European Association of International Education Forum in Berlin, Barbara Kehm argued that research on internationalisation remained interdisciplinary, drawing from a range of disciplines and that there was "no dominant disciplinary, conceptual or methodological 'home' of research on internationalisation in higher education".

Concern, wrote De Wit, was expressed at the forum about lack of clear data and definitions as a basis for research and policy development, that students and academics were overlooked in research and policy agendas, that the core of experienced researchers was small, that research remained dominated by Anglo-Saxon researchers and resources, and a contradiction between the growing importance of internationalisation and lack of funding for its research.

On the positive side, there was more research being done, more opportunities for research dissemination and more PhD students with an interest in international higher education, he said.

karen.macgregor@uw-news.com


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