GLOBAL
Improving access and equity in internationalisation
Concerns about elitism, commercialisation, the high costs of study, corruption, fraud and the challenge of quantity versus quality are common themes across the world in international higher education. But viewed from different global contexts, there may be a range of opinions on who is left out of the internationalisation process, reflected not least in the question of those who ignore versus those who demand a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals.An inclusive internationalisation must take into account the varied socio-political, economic and demographic contexts in different parts of the world and must address the issue that current internationalisation policies and practices are not inclusive and exclude the great majority of students in the world.
Two main paradoxes
Those of us involved in higher education are faced with two main paradoxes.
First, we may be striving to increase internationalisation and global engagement, yet in many countries the escalating trend towards isolationism and inward-looking nationalism results in a disconnect between the local and the global.
Second, while we see an increase in credit and degree mobility around the world, with some challenge in the United Kingdom and the United States as market leaders in degree mobility, this billion-dollar industry reaches only a small student elite, excluding 99% of the world’s student population.
Massification has provided more people with access to higher education than ever before, although it is still in its early stages in the emerging and developing world. But if access and equity in higher education in general is an issue, it is an even greater challenge for international education.
We know that there are many benefits of an international education as well as many drivers for this, including personal or professional reasons, lack of programme availability in the home country, national workforce development, or economic or political displacement.
Yet in some emerging and developing economies, degree mobility reaches no more than 1-2% of the student population and it may have negative connotations, for example, the perception that it leads to a drain on talent for the home country.
Turning to credit mobility or study abroad, this has been taken up around the world as one of the key routes towards internationalisation for students, but outside Europe and the United States, the percentage of credit-mobile students is even lower than that of degree-seeking international students. In other words, although mobility gets most of the attention in terms of internationalisation policy and practice, it is only accessed and realised by a very small number of students.
A recent study by Universities UK found that students from higher managerial and professional occupation backgrounds were almost five times more likely to take part in mobility than students from backgrounds of long-term unemployment.
The same study found that mobile students earn higher university grades and receive higher salaries than their non-mobile counterparts, meaning a greater advantage for those who are already privileged.
Looking more closely at the data behind the numbers, the picture is quite shocking. Underrepresented groups, either in terms of income, ethnicity, migration or disability, have not seen a substantial increase in participation. So, within the already small percentage of mobile students, these groups are even more absent.
Increasing short-term mobility
Finding solutions to increase access to mobility is not easy. Funding is a major constraint. One way of increasing numbers is to provide more short-term opportunities. We know that many benefits can accrue from even short-term mobility for work placement, study or volunteering abroad and that a whole semester or a full year may not be necessary to achieve them.
These benefits include transferable employability skills, such as team work and team leadership, organisational skills and project management, problem-solving, networking, mediation skills and conflict resolution, decision-making and interpersonal skills.
Short-term mobility has also been shown to develop intercultural competence skills such as willingness to take risks, patience, sensitivity, flexibility, open-mindedness, humility, respect and creativity.
The European participation target for the 48 Bologna Process signature countries is to reach 20% by 2020. In the United States, the aim to double study abroad numbers would result in a similar percentage.
Yet even if these targets are reached, the large majority of students – that is, 80% - will not receive the benefits noted here and that picture is even more discouraging elsewhere. Mobility may be both important and necessary, but it is insufficient to deliver inclusive internationalisation.
Integrating mobility into the curriculum
A much more important task is to see mobility as one integral part of the internationalised curriculum and to incorporate student learning outcomes from mobility into the core curriculum at home, which makes internationalisation available for all.
In a 2015 article, Jos Beelen and Elspeth Jones define ‘internationalisation at home’ as “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments”.
Inviting students to reflect on their learning from study abroad experiences will help them to consolidate those outcomes as individuals. It will also contribute to the diversity of perspectives in our classrooms for all our students, which various commentators suggest we have still to fully use.
This includes most importantly the perspectives of students from diverse geographical, national, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Doing so will not in itself internationalise the curriculum: a more fundamental review of programme content, pedagogy, assessment and learning outcomes is needed to achieve that. However, it would offer useful support for the incorporation of alternative perspectives into learning, teaching and assessment processes.
An inclusive approach to ‘internationalisation at home’ goes further than the formal curriculum and involves the whole institution: curriculum developers, programme support staff, library, IT services, human resources and staff development, restaurants and food outlets, quality enhancement, university governance and management and student support – disability services, visas, counselling and advising.
All these services have a role to play in delivering an internationally-oriented university and senior leaders must recognise the extent of the commitment required.
Towards a more inclusive approach
As long ago as 2012, we argued for the need to “focus more attention on faculty and student perspectives on internationalisation”, and we also said that “there is still too great a focus on political and economic rationales from an (inter)national and institutional perspective, in which the perspectives of those for whom it is all intended are under-represented”.
We would argue that little has changed with regard to the need for a renewed focus on students and staff and there is still much to do.
Until we incorporate an inclusive approach to internationalisation into the experience of all students, we run the risk of perpetuating the kind of elitism we try to fight against. And if we want to address the two paradoxes mentioned above, the focus on an economic mobility industry for internationalisation is a risky enterprise. It excludes the large majority of students and confirms the nationalist-populist argument of intellectual elitism.
This kind of inclusive and comprehensive internationalisation – reflected in the 2015 definition as “the intentional process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions and delivery of post-secondary education, in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff and to make a meaningful contribution to society” – requires us to frame our thinking in different ways, regardless of the global context we live in.
Internationalisation for all needs to be the starting point for an institutional internationalisation strategy, reflecting an awareness that all students must be engaged in this agenda for their future lives as citizens and as professionals.
In summary, internationalisation must be inclusive and not elitist, it must address access and equity issues with high priority. To achieve inclusive internationalisation there are several key requirements, including the need to:
- • Incorporate internationalisation at home as an essential basis of internationalisation for all;
- • Recognise, value and use classroom diversity as a means of bringing alternative perspectives to the programme of study; not least from international students, those returning from mobility experiences and students from diverse communities in the local population;
- • Involve the whole institution in delivering inclusive internationalisation;
- • Bridge the local and the global in research, education and service;
- • Focus on regional as well as global partnerships to help deliver an inclusive internationalisation agenda.