Risk on the Frontlines of the University

• In Event: International Education and Risk

Abstract

1. Purpose of the presentation: Audience will be asked to consider the preparation of university personnel specifically tasked to manage frontline risks related to the internationalization of higher education, and how these international educators are prepared to evaluate risk within the framework of policies grounded in a domestic worldview as compared to the multiple worldview contexts in which they operate.

2. Perspective: Universities tend to be timid around risk (Tufano, 2011) yet often have ambitious goals in particular related to internationalization, sending personnel to different countries, tasked with ‘internationalization’. Experienced international collaborators understand that intercultural skills are vital for the creation of effective collaborating environments with foreign education systems. Yet university risk mitigation policies and procedures outline tactics to minimize financial and quality assurance risks based on normative single-country approaches to risk evaluation. Do initiators of international collaborations see an agreement through the eyes of the other party and understand that their interpretation might be different?

3. Significance: Internationalization of higher education has always been a risky enterprise and the risks of using a normative single-nation approach to collaboration leaves universities open, at the very least, to misunderstandings and miscommunication. As Southwood (2012) points out, “the nature of sovereign government means that rarely is an international agreement to cooperate fully legally binding”. University policy actors need to expand the worldview that infuses decisions around risk to incorporate experiences and lessons learned from other regions and sectors. Resources are required and programmatic/structural/organizational adjustments need to support realistic risk mitigation strategies for front-line personnel who are pushed to establish new ventures internationally inside rules and regulations that create unanticipated risk to the institutions they represent.

Author

• Sonja Knutson, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada