Like widening participation, internationalisation is a “good thing.” But while widening participation is more observed in the breach than in the observance, bar the efforts of a dozen big urban “post-1992” universities, internationalisation is for everyone. In a word search of university strategic plans, “internationalisation” would probably top the poll. Examples abound. For instance, University College London proudly proclaims it is “London's Global University.”
But what does internationalisation mean? The experts, of course, define it as the highest stage of international relations among universities. It is not just a fancy word to justify packing in more (high-fee) international students, or even a label to describe exotic partnerships (which inevitably demand much travelling by senior managers). The whole institution — its courses and curriculum, all its students, its research reach — has become infused with an international spirit.
I prefer a simpler distinction — the good, the bad and the ugly. Internationalisation is a clumsy word used to describe a wide range of activities, some of which we should be very proud of, and others best left in the shadows. But first, we need to dispose of the rhetoric. The overwhelming majority of universities were established as national institutions — for example, the big civic universities here in Britain and the land-grant universities in the U.S. They were not spontaneously created somewhere in the international ether.
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Of course, universities have always had roles that transcend their national boundaries. Students and scholars have always been “mobile.” International research collaboration has always flourished. Scientific communities have always been global. But all of this happened without any need for managerial-bureaucratic initiatives to “internationalise” the university. Internationalisation is a neologism, dating back to the 1980s at the earliest — and, disconcertingly, aligned with neo-liberalism.
Good and bad aspects
So back to the good, the bad and the ugly. The good aspects of internationalisation are things such as its potential to transform the lives of international students; its role in sustaining, and growing, science and scholarship through vigorous academic exchanges; and its potential to build social and economic capacity (especially, but not exclusively, in developing countries). The first of these will always endure. But the second nowadays often seems a contingent effect of other, less wholesome, objectives; while the third, I fear, is dwindling into insignificance.
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The bad aspects, sadly, are the mainstream drivers of internationalisation. First is the pressure to recruit international students, almost entirely because they can be charged higher fees. Maybe the post-Browne ability to charge English students much higher fees will curb that appetite.
Second is the drive for geopolitical and commercial advantage. In the eyes of government, this is what it is all about. For institutions it has the advantage of gold-plating, and future-proofing, international student recruitment. Either way, ethical considerations count for little. The recent London School of Economics imbroglio with Qadhafi was a modestly venial example. Of greater concern is the way British universities have piled into China, human rights record be damned.
Third is global positioning. UCL's “global” claim in its strapline is an assertion of status. The same applies to membership of global alliances of research-intensive universities or just of “top” universities. Maybe as national hierarchies have become more open, as they have in Britain with the abandonment of the binary distinction between universities and polytechnics and the unpredictable effect of league tables, newly constructed global hierarchies offer a comforting refuge.
Finally, the ugly: “international flight.” Universities that struggle to recruit students at home have targeted less discerning international students to fill their places. Others have attempted to overcome chronic threats to their sustainability, perhaps because they are too small or too specialised, by engaging in what can only be described as foreign adventures, fraught with financial and reputational risks. Both strategies subvert their core responsibilities as U.K. institutions founded and funded with national purposes in mind.
There is an urgent need to reset the compass of internationalisation, to steer towards the good and away from the ugly. Not only is this morally right, it is also probably in the best long-term interests of the sector. At the very least, it provides firm ground on which to stand against the rising wind of anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, anti-“other” populism. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
( Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education .)