The internationalization of higher education: conceptualizations, strategies, and consequences

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Over the past several decades, higher education institutions (HEIs) have been undergoing dramatic organizational changes leading to fundamental changes in their core missions. This process, known as “internationalization,” has been driven in part by global economic competition and fueled by standards of excellence and the desire to climb in global university rankings. The papers in this panel address the conceptualizations, strategies, and consequences of the internationalization of higher education cross-nationally and in the case of one of the papers, for UK universities in particular.

The first paper addresses the lack of systematic, empirical research on what internationalization means across the spectrum of HEIs. In addition, it seeks to understand the values and principles that are referenced in institutional internationalization policies, and the aspirations and standards of excellence adopted in the process of internationalization. The authors do so by examining internet-based structured data and unstructured data for UK universities. Preliminary results of an explanatory factor analysis find the most frequently appearing key words on UK university web pages relating to internationalization to fall under the following distinct dimensions: Global Outlook, Academic Orientation, Excellence, Market Orientation, Organizational Agency, Societal Impact, External Connectedness, and Diversity.

In the second paper, the author draws on sociological neo-institutionalism to rationalize the internationalization of higher education to be the result of changing world cultural norms occurring alongside the restructuring of higher education’s organizational field from the national to the global level. Through an analysis of survey data from close to 1,300 universities, the author finds differences in the degree to which HEIs support and enable internationalization based on their missions and orientations.

The third paper builds on this to examine, also through the lens of neo-institutionalism, how HEIs reframe their missions and organizational purposes to align with ones that have a more global orientation. The author uses computational text analysis to analyze the mission and vision statements of over 240 universities around the world. Unlike the third paper, which finds that public and teaching-focused missions are less likely to embrace internationalization, results from this paper suggest that large public HEIs in lower income countries are just as likely to refer to global aspirations in their missions. The author goes on to discuss the decoupling of missions and visions with organizational structures.

The fourth paper asks if internationalization is in fact a necessity or luxury for HEIs. On the one hand, setting up campuses, programs, offices, and expanding students, staff, and faculty come at large financial costs. The authors documented such structures and personnel from a sample of HEIs in over 140 countries in an effort to understand cross-national variations in the conceptualizations and implementation of “internationalization.” Preliminary results suggest that lesser-known HEIs, particularly in lower income countries, establish features of internationalization in order to gain international recognition and ensure financial stability.

Finally, at a time of intense internationalization of higher education, what consequences result for those within the academy? In this paper, the authors extend work that shows the dramatic growth of women faculty in all ranks to understand and explain these trends for faculty specifically in tenured positions, and in four distinct fields – history, sociology, engineering, and biology. Descriptive findings suggest that men continue to outnumber women in total faculty, tenured faculty, and even non-tenured ranks. Through the lenses of world society theory, structural diversification, and gendered processes of political and social change, the statistical findings lend support to most of the hypotheses.

With a better understanding of the conceptualizations, strategies, and consequences of the internationalization of higher education, it is hoped that these papers contribute to important and critical conversations about the internationalization of higher education, including if institutions should be directing huge amounts of financial and other resources to internationalization efforts. Are such efforts sustainable and whom do they benefit?

Sub Unit

• SIG: Higher Education

Chair

• Francisco Ramirez, Stanford University

Individual Presentations

• International university as an identity - Yasemin Soysal, University of Essex; Roxana-Diana Baltaru, The University of Warwick

• Celebrating the global: internationalization as a global model - Elizabeth S. Buckner, University of Toronto

• The global race towards a “world class” university? An examination of university mission statements worldwide - Seungah Lee, Stanford University

• “Internationalize or perish”: unpacking the impetus to internationalize at universities around the world - S. Gabriela Gavrila, Stanford University; Seungah Lee, Stanford University

• Gender segregation among academic faculty: a study of elite higher education institutions across 13 countries - Mana Nakagawa, Facebook; Christine Min Wotipka, Stanford University; Elizabeth S. Buckner, University of Toronto