International university as an identity

• In Event: The internationalization of higher education: conceptualizations, strategies, and consequences

Proposal

In recent decades, “internationalization” has been a key organizational strategy of the expansion of the core missions of higher education systems, beyond teaching and research to driving economic development and pursuing global competition. There is little systematic, empirical research however on what internationalization means across the spectrum of HE institutions, the values and principles that are referenced in institutional internationalization policies, and aspirations and standards of excellence adopted in the process of internationalization. In this paper we specifically ask: how do UK universities conceptualize and strategize internationalization as part of their institutional identity? Our analysis draws upon internet-based structured data (mission statements on internationalization and international student prospectuses) and also unstructured data (scraping of university web pages linked with “international, global, and abroad”).

Universities, particularly in Europe, are increasingly part of an expanded organizational field. As European universities’ close integration with the State is relaxed, they are expected to be responsive to an extended number of external stakeholders. Universities are under pressure to create not only knowledge but also market and social value. Thus we expect internationalization to be linked with different, at times contradictory, dimensions of university identity profiles. To identify these dimensions, first we conducted an explanatory factor analysis on the most frequently appearing key words on the UK university webpages in relation to internationalization. This yielded the following distinct dimensions: Global Outlook, Academic Orientation, Excellence, Market Orientation, Organizational Agency, Societal Impact, External Connectedness, and Diversity. In the second stage, we will be analyzing whether these dimensions are linked with different institutional characteristics (e.g. size, founding year, ranking, fee dependence, and the existence of high level administrators dedicated to internationalization, such as vice-President International).

Authors

• Yasemin Soysal, University of Essex

• Roxana-Diana Baltaru, The University of Warwick