Beyond prestige: Internationalization and international student recruitment in mid-tier HEIs

• In Event: Rethinking Internationalization: Lessons from Practice

Proposal

Background and Research Questions
Internationalization has become a defining feature of global higher education, yet much of the existing literature disproportionately focuses on elite, research-intensive universities. This has created a significant gap concerning how mid-tier higher education institutions (HEIs), which are typically characterized by modest international reputation and constrained resources, interpret and implement internationalization (de Wit et al., 2015). This gap is even more prominent in non-Western contexts, which have also been under-researched (Bedenlier et al., 2017). To examine this gap systematically, this study focuses on international student recruitment (ISR), which is one of the most common ways by which HEIs internationalize (Wang, 2022). Although ISR is often discussed as a policy tool or a competitive strategy in the global market for students, few studies have analyzed how it is enacted in institutions that are constrained by limited global standing and resources. Situated in Taiwan, a context that is emerging as an attractive destination for international students amid a rapidly declining local population, this study investigates how two mid-tier public universities engage in ISR as a central internationalization strategy. Specifically, two research questions guide this inquiry:
1. How do mid-tier Taiwanese universities conceptualize and implement ISR as part of their internationalization agenda?
2. What internal and external forces shape their strategic choices?
By focusing on mid-tier HEIs, this study contributes to a more inclusive understanding of how internationalization unfolds in diverse tiers of the global higher education landscape.

Theoretical Frameworks
The study is guided by two theoretical frameworks: Knight’s (2008) internationalization framework, particularly her typology of rationales and internationalization strategies, and Marginson and Rhoades’ (2002) glonacal agency heuristic. Knight’s framework provides an institutional lens to examine why and how mid-tier universities internationalize, capturing both institutional motivations (academic, economic, political, and socio-cultural) and strategic dimensions (programmatic and organizational). The glonacal heuristic, meanwhile, offers a macro lens that emphasizes how global, national, and local forces interact to shape institutional behavior. Together, these frameworks provide a comprehensive analytical lens to examine both the strategic dimensions and multi-level forces that drive ISR in mid-tier HEIs, enabling analysis of how institutional agency unfolds within layered contexts of influence and constraint.

Methods
This research employed a multiple case study design (Stake, 2005), focusing on two public mid-tier HEIs, broadly representing the mid-tier segment of Taiwan’s national higher education system. Data were collected through 27 semi-structured interviews with senior leadership, international affairs staff, and academic faculty directly involved in ISR planning and implementation. Interview participants were purposively selected to capture diverse perspectives across organizational levels and functional areas. Institutional documents supplemented interview data to triangulate findings and ensure contextual depth. Data analysis followed a thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006) informed by the theoretical frameworks. The rigor of the analysis was enhanced by iterative coding and constant comparisons between data, emerging themes, and theoretical concepts.

Findings
Three key findings emerged. First, ISR at both mid-tier HEIs was characterized by a form of “regionalized internationalization.” While outwardly aligned with global trends, such as English-medium instruction and global rankings, their student recruitment activities were concentrated within Asia, particularly targeting countries emphasized by national policy initiatives like Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy. This geographic concentration was not merely circumstantial but represented strategic responses to institutional constraints and opportunities. For instance, one HEI pursued recruitment through specialized partnerships in agriculture and life sciences that aligned with local workforce development needs, while the other developed broader partnership portfolios while remaining attentive to local integration requirements and national bilingual education policies.

Second, institutional rationales for ISR proved to be context-specific in ways that challenge conventional assumptions. While academic and economic rationales were prominent, their expressions varied significantly from dominant narratives in internationalization literature. Economic motivation was not primarily about maximizing tuition revenue, as frequently assumed, but focused on securing stable enrollment patterns and accessing policy-linked funding. Political rationales were shaped by alignment with diplomatic initiatives, often reinterpreted as institutional priorities necessary for policy compliance and funding eligibility.

Third, implementation of ISR strategies exhibited fragmentation and unevenness. However, rather than interpreting this as failure, the analysis revealed this pattern as a structural feature of mid-tier HEIs, which typically lack centralized internationalization structures or consistent faculty engagement in internationalization activities. These institutions may develop coherent internationalization plans, but their realization is mediated by resource limitations, partial integration across academic departments, and varying faculty priorities and capabilities.

Conclusion and Significance
The findings of this study make the following contributions to internationalization scholarship. Theoretically, it confirms the continued relevance of both Knight’s and Marginson and Rhoades’ frameworks while extending them to analyze institutional stratification and resource asymmetry in internationalization processes. The study demonstrates that ISR cannot be understood as a uniform strategy but must be analyzed as refracted through specific institutional missions, policy environments, and socio-economic contexts. The findings propose understanding mid-tier HEIs as distinctive glonacal actors, that is, as neither global powerhouses nor purely local institutions, but as institutions whose internationalization emerges from multiple scales of influence and constraint.

Empirically, the study enriches the limited literature on mid-tier HEIs and their internationalization practices, particularly in Southeast Asian contexts. It provides grounded, comparative insights into how institutions facing demographic decline, geopolitical shifts, and resource constraints deal with policy environments that are increasingly driven by global metrics and international benchmarks. The findings highlight the need for more inclusive and context-sensitive models of internationalization that recognize the differentiated capacities and institutional logics of universities operating outside the global elite tier. The study also challenges dominant narratives of internationalization as a competitive pursuit of global prestige, instead showing how institutions pursue internationalization as an adaptive process that is simultaneously shaped by aspiration, policy directive, institutional mission, and structural constraint. In doing so, it calls for a reconceptualization of internationalization theory to better reflect the diversity and situatedness of HEIs across the globe, moving beyond elite-centric models toward more inclusive understandings of how internationalization operates across institutional hierarchies and contexts.

Authors

• Amelio Salvador Quetzal, National Chung Cheng University

• Sheng-Ju Chan, National Chung Cheng University