Student internationality mobility after COVID-19 in higher education: New Struggles but Familiar Patterns.

• In Event: Making the internationalization of higher education more equitable: What do we know from the literature post-pandemic?

Proposal

People mobility is a core component of the internationalization models that integrate our shared conceptual framework. For instance, the American Council of Education (ACE) defines “people mobility” as the physical movement of people (students, faculty, and staff) with the purpose of engaging in learning, research, and/or collaboration. We classified people mobility into two types in our analysis: inbound mobility (both degree- and credit-seeking) and outbound mobility (both degree- and credit-seeking). Inbound and outbound mobility are each relative to an international higher education perspective: inbound mobility refers to students, faculty, and staff coming from abroad to the country and institution to engage in learning, research, and/or collaboration; outbound mobility refers to students, faculty, and staff traveling abroad to engage in learning, research, and/or collaboration. The same student may be considered inbound and outbound depending on the view of the institution or country; therefore, in our model, each type is a sub-domain under the broader category of “people mobility” (Choudaha & de Wit, 2014)

The sources analyzed in this review reveal that the literature post-pandemic is less likely to clarify the population of focus. For example, many articles referenced “international students” or “international mobility” in general. Articles on inbound international student mobility most commonly profiled degree-seeking students, whereas those on outbound mobility examined credit-seeking students (i.e., those studying abroad). These generalizations are quite broad, and many articles concentrating on inbound international students did not state whether students were degree-seeking or credit-seeking. Articles on outbound mobility tended to be much clearer regarding their population of interest. Most of these studies concerned Chinese students’ preferences for international degree mobility in the wake of COVID-19.

Despite the lack of nuance regarding the type of mobility, studies in this category constituted the largest proportion of the sources analyzed. This suggests that while the realities have changed substantially, student mobility from Global South to Global North, with a focus on revenue generation continue to be a dominant manifestation of internationalization.

Authors

• Adriana Marroquin, OISE, University of Toronto

• You Zhang, OISE, University of Toronto