Higher education in an age of disruption: Internationalization policies in England, France, and Germany reacting to Brexit and COVID-19

• In Event: Policies, norms, and disruptions in higher education

Proposal

The Brexit vote and the COVID-19 pandemic greatly disrupted longstanding higher education (HE) internationalization policies and practices, and in particular the taken-for-grantedness of physical student mobility in a borderless European Union (EU). While contemporary witnesses predicted radical Brexit- and pandemic-induced transformations of HE internationalization, theoretical conceptualizations of institutional change and stability generally highlight the importance of path dependencies (Hall & Taylor, 1996; Immergut, 1998; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 2008). The latter are particularly pertinent when it comes to HE as one of societies’ key institutions, which is deeply intertwined with country-specific historical trajectories and marked by a general resistance to change (Hasse & Krücken, 2008; Meyer & Powell, 2020). This paper departs from the competing appraisals of the transformative impact of the two disruptions. It presents key findings from a recently completed dissertation project, which asks: How have Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted HE internationalization in different country contexts?

To answer this question, a novel analytical framework is developed, which combines the diachronic perspective of historical institutionalism (Capoccia & Kelemen, 2007; Bell & Feng, 2021; Hogan et al., 2022; Mahoney, 2001; Stark, 2018) with the multidimensional conceptualization of institutions as stipulated by sociological institutionalism. Drawing on Scott’s (2008) institutional dimensions, regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive indicators of HE internationalization are defined, and the disruption-antecedent institutional dimensions are compared with their state during the disruption-induced window of opportunity, which covers the time frame of 2016 until 2021. Based on patterns of change and/or stability across the three individual dimensions, three competing overarching institutional trajectories in the context of disruptions are established: A) radical change, B) partial change, or C) no change. The analytical framework is applied to the three country cases of England, France, and Germany given that they not only feature the most internationalized European HE systems in terms of the number of inbound degree-seeking international students, but they also represent different archetypes of HE governance. Thus, the three-way comparison of the disruptions’ (non-)impact on the market-based English HE system, the state-dominated French HE system, and the Humboldtian German HE system allows for a compelling analysis of the way antecedent institutional features shape disruption responses.

The empirical study draws on computer-assisted qualitative content analysis of 44 expert interviews conducted between 2020 and 2021 with Senior Internationalization Officers (SIOs) working at English, French, and German universities; as well as policymakers employed at national ministries and national internationalization agencies. The expert interviews are further triangulated with governmental and organizational documents, and a wealth of news items that capture country-specific developments; as well as the very limited secondary literature on the disruptions’ impact on HE policy.

Based on the comparative analysis of Brexit- and COVID-19-related developments in the three country contexts, the study finds that Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic did not lead to radical institutional change as was projected by contemporary witnesses. Rather, the disruptions opened up windows of opportunity for institutional change agents to reinforce existing path trajectories or clear the path for already concretely decided but previously languishing policy reforms. The observed path reinforcement and path clearing particularly concerned HE internationalization policies and norms connected to the positive or negative appraisal of European HE integration, and digitalization reforms. Overall, the observed regulative and normative changes across the country/disruption combinations were in line with disruption-antecedent cultural-cognitive traditions, that is, national HE governance configurations involving the state-market-academy triangle and traditionally collaborative or competitive approaches towards HE internationalization.

The study contributes to the theoretical and empirical understanding of HE internationalization in the context of disruptions, and thus to both the HE and the institutionalist literatures. By newly combining elements of historical and sociological institutionalism, the developed analytical framework tackles important limitations of existing conceptualizations of disruption-induced institutional change. Importantly, it incorporates a more nuanced, multidimensional understanding of institutions and sheds light on the way institutional change can be accomplished by change agents across the institutional dimensions over a given time period. Empirically, the study generates novel insights into a recent and still highly underexplored period of time which was marked by a high degree of policy activity in the realm of HE internationalization. Thus, the study not only contributes to a more nuanced understanding of institutional change and stability in the context of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, but also paints a comparative picture of strategic HE internationalization as a national endeavor that has become deeply intertwined with key policy areas including immigration, economics, and digitalization.

Author

• Anna Prisca Lohse, Technische Universität Berlin