Alain Beretz, president of the University of Strasbourg, talks to Eliza Anyangwe about French higher education and what internationalisation means when university costs €300 a year.
Tell me about yourself and your career
Like all presidents at French institutions, I am an academic. I was first a professor of pharmacology at the University of Strasbourg and then I was vice president for some time, in charge of what you would call 'technology transfer'. I then became president of the former university Louis Pasteur before being elected to the presidency of the University of Strasbourg in 2008.
Do you think that all leaders in higher education institutions should come from an academic background?
There are two issues here: the first is should the leader be an academic? And the worldwide model and my view is that definitely it should. But I recently read a book suggesting that presidents should not just be academics but must also be among the top scholars at their institution. So the question should actually be: do you have to be one of the top researchers of your university to be the president? I am not among the top 10% of researchers here. I have a good research record but not more so than most of my colleagues.
I think that while the leader must be an academic, he or she must be assisted by professional managers because we are not professional managers. A university is a very big and complex organisation and the leader must master the budget, deal with legal problems, deal with human resources issues. For that, we need help.
You became the first president when three universities in Strasbourg merged, tell me about that.
A university was founded in the city in 1538 but was split into three in 1970, predominantly according to their disciplines - there was a university of the humanities, one for the science and one for law and business. In 2009, those three merged into one and I was elected, by the staff at all three, as president of the newly-unified institution. The University of Strasbourg was the first to merge in France, setting an example for the institutions that have followed.
Why do you think your colleagues voted you the man to lead the newly-merged institution?
The merger is not a personal achievement. Three generations of presidents worked on it and I was only part of that last generation. It is a long-term political issue that has to first be seeded, then it grows and finally it sprouts and flowers. It would be wrong to take the credit. The presidents of the other institutions had the job of pulling or pushing their troops into the merger and there were difficulties, academics from the institutions perceived each other as threats to their research. We had to prove that on the day to day pharmacologists could work alongside sociologists, for example.
University of Strasbourg prides itself on being interdisciplinary. Did the merger help create that culture?
Our main ambition with the merger was to return to what a university should be: a comprehensive institution with all the disciplines. This 50 year parentheses in history when we had specialised universities was a nonsense in my opinion. All the major British universities are comprehensive - Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, Imperial and so on. You obviously have exceptions like the Karolinska Institute in Sweden which is a medical university, or MIT in the States.
It is not easy to overcome the cultural barriers necessary for interdisciplinarity, especially here where the faculties or departments were individually very strong. It is not easy to build bridges but we are working on it. In research, though, it is easy as there is a tendency to create multidisciplinary teams but to create multidisciplinary curricular and think outside your subject area in teaching is much more difficult.
You've begun to compare French universities to institutions elsewhere in the world. What are your thoughts on internationalisation in HE?
The majority of my career has been in France and, in fact, here in Strasbourg - with the exception of a year at the Wiezmann Institute in Israel during my post-doc. But I'm aware I am very much the exception, and now seek as much as possible to make sure my university is connected internationally. Our university is, for example, a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and I am on the LERU board. This type of benchmarking is invaluable for us. In Strasbourg, we have an international history that shapes our internationalisation policy. The city was once German - and not occupied France - and our closest academic neighbours are not French but German and Swiss, (we are also part of a regional university group called Eucor) and now with the European Parliament meeting here, we are certainly more international than many other institutions in France.
So, internationalisation is part of our identity but we also have to work on building a worldwide network, though we are doing well: we are one of the French universities with the highest percentage of international students - more than 20%, of that a third is from Europe, another third is from Africa and the last third from the rest of the world. At the moment, we are not particularly interested in offering our degrees overseas through branch campuses. What must be borne in mind is that, unlike the UK, our international students pay the same fees as home students. So for us, internationalisation is not a source of additional revenue, it is more a political strategy.
'Students as consumers' is an often-debated topic in UK. What are your views on this and what is the situation in France?
I think students as pure consumers is a mistake but students as non-passive actors of the university system is now absolutely necessary. We have to get our students involved and respond to their criticism and suggestions but becoming a mere enterprise would be a terrible mistake. We are not a normal enterprise. We do have to deal with many of the same issues that enterprises face but investments in higher education are long-term and the types of returns that can be expected are varied and include research that might not have immediate economic impacts. More specifically, the issues around fees have not yet become relevant in France. We are still largely exclusively government funded.
The public nature of French universities is fiercely protected but then there are also 'grandes ecoles' which are very exclusive and hard for students from low income backgrounds to access. How good are French institutions at widening participation?
University in France is practically free. Fees are nominal - less than €300 per year. It is not fees that make access difficult here. As for the grandes ecoles, some are costly while others are free but the main difference is that admittance is based on a very selective process, and I would add that the selection criteria are not always the most transparent. The other key difference between the grandes ecoles and the rest of French HE is that the former don't do much research. They are a remnant from the technical schools set up under Napoleon so we have, for example, Ecole de Mines, for mines and Ecole de Ponts for bridges. The Ecole Polytechnique, which is the best of the grandes ecoles is still closely related to the army and its president is a general!
That said, the question of access is still not often asked in France. When you look at the statistics on the numbers from low income families, despite the low costs, the stats aren't very favourable. Access to higher education is clearly then not just a question of fees, it's a societal issue and addressing it starts in high school. But it is also a question of values. Children are told that the pinnacle in achievement comes from attending the Polytechnique but it's not for everyone. We have to show young people and their families that fascinating things are happening across the breadth of French HE and there are very many career options available to students.
What are your hopes for the future of French HE?
My hope is that in these troubled times, everyone will realise that investing in universities is a long-term investment for the benefit of society as a whole and one that must be maintained.

By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser. When it comes to the internationalization of higher education, the Russian Bear has remained in hibernation. On the global stage, Russia has not been widely viewed as a major international player in the area of higher education, nor has it made any splashy announcements about new government policies or institutional activities. Such a situation is surprising when one considers the amount of internationalizing activity engaged in by the other emerging economies of the BRIC group. Brazil recently launched its Science without Borders program to send 100,000 students abroad in three years. India and China are often discussed as the top senders of students studying abroad in the world. All three have been very public in discussing their desires to internationalize their higher education sectors, including wanting to make their own higher education institutions more internationally competitive. Moreover, Brazil, India and China are located in the fastest growing regions of destination for students studying abroad. In the meantime, the Bear has slumbered.
It is important to note that the Russian higher education system has historic strengths, particularly in areas such as math, science, and economics. Moreover, the government has been working to restructure the nation’s vast system to position it to grow and thrive in a post Soviet era, though not all reforms have been easy. But now it seems that Russia has a new found interest in international engagement.

Concern over the inability of Russia’s higher education institutions to compete in international rankings has recently fostered great concern among institutional leaders and government officials. As a recent New York Times article summarized, “Each new [international] rating announcement sets off hand-wringing about the predominance of the United States and the rise of China, both sore points and models for Russia.” Part of their strategy to strengthen Russia’s higher education system is to focus on internationalization.

For example, Jason was invited to a meeting in Moscow in late May sponsored by Russia’s National Training Foundation that was focused on the internationalization of Russia. While Jason and other foreign speakers discussed the changing nature of internationalization and how different governments and systems have sought to foster internationalization, Russian speakers discussed their own efforts and the need for internationalization in Russia. One of the most impassioned set of remarks came from Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council. He emphasized that the internationalization of Russian higher education was imperative both for growing the soft power of the Russian State and strengthening Russia’s economic competitiveness (thoughts we’ve echoed more generally before here and here).

The general sentiment of those participating seemed to be that in order for internationalization efforts to move from rhetoric to reality there needed to be greater cooperation between the Russian government and higher education institutions.
Russian higher education institutions have faced a number of obstacles in their attempts to internationalize. The two leading obstacles, according to a 2007 report from OECD, are problems with recognizing foreign degrees and the lack of compatibility of the domestic higher education system with those of other nations. However, both obstacles seem to be disappearing. Until recently the government rarely recognized foreign academic credentials and hiring a foreigner to teach or research at a Russian university required special permission from the government. Such restrictions made it very difficult to attract non-Russians to assume faculty positions at Russian universities. To address this issue, President Medvedev, in December, 2011, signed a new law allowing for automatic degree recognition of a select group of foreign institutions and reducing the red tape that often prolonged hiring of foreign academics.

The lack of compatibility between higher education systems creates a barrier both for Russian students going abroad and foreign students coming to Russia. In terms of being a study abroad destination, Russia’s share of student’s studying abroad remains less than 5%, below that of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France and Canada. However, there are signs of growth.  Between 2000 and 2009, Russia’s share doubled from 2% to 4%. Moreover, while China and India may be home to largest number of students studying outside of their country, Russia doesn’t lag that far behind — it is the sixth largest sender of students abroad. And, the Russian government announced a new loan program starting in 2012 to support students studying abroad in certain key areas. The loan would be forgiven if the student returned to Russia for three years.

Other issues remain, though. How the health benefits and pensions for foreign academic will be handled is still not clear. The growth in the number of international students studying in Russia mostly comes from neighboring states, many of which were former Soviet republics, and not from the broader global market. Many Russian students who do not speak a foreign language face barriers to study outside of the country. Internationalization efforts are not comprehensive across the sector, focused mainly on the nation’s  elite institutions.  And, while the government has laid the legal groundwork for institutions to create two-tiered (bachelor and masters) academic programs in line with their participation in the Bologna Process, most institutions have yet to make any actual changes.

These challenges to internationalization persist, and despite the interest expressed at the Moscow meeting, implementation still lags. So, while the Bear begins to wake, we wait to see whether it will roar or merely yawn.

By Margaret Mazzolini. Transnational education is evolving: agreements that may have started out as ‘fly in, fly out’ delivery of foreign curricula now typically need to meet governmental expectations for collaborative partnerships that will develop institutional capability within the host country.
Nowhere is this trend more obvious than in the evolution of branch campus partnerships. Initial planning and business-case development for branch campus initiatives has tended to focus on supporting internationalisation strategies of parent institutions, exploring market opportunities and complying with governmental regulations. Less emphasis has typically been placed on planning for collaborative approaches to tackle learning, teaching and curriculum issues, even though addressing these is crucial if a new branch campus is to achieve excellence in educational outcomes within an international context.
The sustainability of branch campus initiatives relies on developing an engaging student learning experience that is relevant to – and enriched by – the national and social contexts of both the parent institution and the branch campus. In turn, this relies on branch campus academics being empowered to contribute to the development as well as to the delivery of teaching programmes in ways that can strengthen their academic career paths. Branch campus student populations may be made up of diverse cohorts of local and foreign students and include visiting students from the parent institution. Their motivations for studying at branch campuses and their expectations concerning learning experiences there have been little studied, but anecdotally vary widely, and so a ‘one size fits all’ approach involving transplanted curricula is unlikely to result in engaged learning.
The case of Australia
Using Australian transnational education partnerships as illustrative examples, branch campus websites commonly promote the delivery of an ‘Australian education experience’, but are less specific about whether this implies identical curricula, internationalised curricula with an ‘Australian flavour’ or Australian (=Western?) approaches to learning and teaching. Branch campus students may therefore expect to receive a learning experience that is largely identical to that at Australian institutions and delivered by Australian nationals.
In reality, while ‘fly in’ Australian academics may contribute occasional guest lectures, most teaching is undertaken by branch campus academics, typically from a range of national origins but including few Australian nationals. Branch campus academics understandably seek to bring their own diverse expertise and perspectives to their teaching. Where content and delivery are constrained to be the same as in the parent campus, branch campus students may find themselves studying material developed in Australian contexts that has limited relevance to their interests and their likely career outcomes.
As a consequence, branch campus learning experiences are evolving to include region-specific, ‘contextualised’ units of study, discipline specialisations and even whole programmes that are accredited in Australia but may only be offered in the branch campus location. If we take a constructivist view of curricula as involving not only planned learning opportunities but also the learning experiences that students actually encounter within their learning environment, then it is inevitable that curricula experienced on branch campuses must be influenced by local contexts. Further, the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of branch campus students and academics provide the potential to produce internationalised curricula that develop faster at branch campuses than in their parent institutions.
In this context where branch campus curricula are inevitably becoming contextualised, transnational education quality assurance approaches that previously relied on Australian content and assessment being transplanted into branch campus classes are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Australian universities with branch campuses are now required to demonstrate ‘equivalence of learning outcomes’ by the new Australian national regulator TEQSA, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, and typically by host country regulators also. This provides scope for branch campus academics to contribute to the development and delivery of contextualised, internationalised curricula – as long as academics at both the parent institution and the branch campus can agree to collaborate on learning outcomes and moderation of assessment tasks and standards, and receive appropriate academic development support in doing so.
When negotiating new branch campus partnerships, this evolution in approaches to curricula highlights the need to be explicit in setting mutual expectations about branch teaching and learning approaches. The outcome, assuming that parent universities can cope with sharing curriculum control with their maturing branch campuses, has the potential to produce engaging, internationalised curricula that enrich the learning experience ‘across borders’ at both branch campuses and parent institutions alike.
* Professor Margaret Mazzolini is pro vice-chancellor of learning and teaching at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia.
* This article is based on a presentation given at the OBHE Global Forum 2012, “New Players and New Directions: The challenges of international branch campus management”, held in Kuala Lumpur last week.
* The reflections draw on the outcomes of the Learning without Borders project, a collaboration between members of the Australian and Malaysian campuses of Swinburne University of Technology and Curtin University. The project website contains online professional development modules, together with recommendations and checklists designed to support the roles of transnational education academics and promote internationalisation of the curriculum.

By David Jobbins. Lack of an explicit global strategy can be dangerous for universities, an international specialist from the University of London has warned.
Tim Gore, director of global networks and communities for the university’s international programmes, said that institutions can learn from industry in developing global strategies – but he stopped short of recommending an ideal model. More research is needed, he added. Gore, author of a report for the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) published ahead of its forum in Kuala Lumpur, said that few universities have well-articulated global strategies that their staff and stakeholders can easily relate to and share.
Spelling out the risk, he said: “At the very least there will be missed opportunities and wasted resources; at worst, universities may find themselves on the road to extinction as environmental changes around them threaten their niche.”
He claimed that many universities had grown their international work without a clear strategy.
“There is also a tendency to confuse a business model with a strategy. A mode of collaboration, such as a franchise arrangement, is a business model rather than a strategy.
“Strategies employ business models but have a longer term time frame; take into account the likely effects of competitive actions and changes in the operating environment; build learning loops into the processes; and, most crucially of all, manage a changing risk environment.”
He suggested that universities characteristically had cautious strategies, with small-scale venturing.
“This has led to solid long-lasting institutions but this is a major trade-off against adaptability,” Gore said. For example Dr Henry Mintzberg, a leading thinker on corporate strategy, measured the compound growth of his alma mater, McGill University in Montreal, Canada, at 3.78% over 152 years.
Building a global strategy for a university is far from easy and a foreign partner is often crucial to bridge the learning gap, Gore argued. “The environments universities operate in are typically highly regulated and a university operating in its own complex regulatory environment may have to deal with a large number of equally complex but substantially different overseas environments.”
The New York and Laureate models
The aim is of developing a truly ‘global’ university that can be recognised anywhere is exemplified by the initiatives led by John Sexton, president of New York University, in the United Arab Emirates and China.
“Sexton has added Abu Dhabi and Shanghai as the next ‘portals’ in his network, complementing an existing network of study-away sites in strategic locations around the world that Sexton dubs as ‘idea capitals’."
The concept is based on a philosophy of equality between campuses, with students able to move between campuses with their credits transferred into parallel programmes elsewhere, taught by a similar faculty mix. This is no small undertaking. NYU Shanghai is being set up as an independent entity authorised to grant degrees and jointly operated by NYU and the East China Normal University – a mechanism similar to the University of Liverpool’s approach in China but with NYU Shanghai as an integral part of the NYU global network.
Gore argued that the attraction of this strategic approach lies in its simplicity of purpose – the establishment of a globally recognisable brand with student mobility at the centre. But he suggested it also has several weaknesses, principally that the numbers of students who take advantage of the mobility are always likely to be the minority, and towards very few supplier countries such as the US and UK.
A different version of this model is exemplified by Laureate International Universities, which allows universities it acquires to preserve their local identity while “harmonising the hidden workings into an efficiently run network”. In essence this relies less on global mobility and more on economies of scale and scope in the underlying systems that support the more than half a million students over more than 100 campuses worldwide.
The 'weak' global partnership model
Gore’s 'weak' version of the global network concept seeks to establish a global presence through involvement in or creation of global partnership organisations.
“Many universities approach the same goal through partnership and cooperation,” he said. “Thus we see the growth of global alliances such as Universitas21 or the World Cities World Class (WC2) university network uniting City University London with a range of partners around the world.
"Such alliances seek to gradually build a web of interrelating activities between the member institutions. Although this type of network can be almost insignificant to its members at one extreme it can also provide an incubator environment to grow multi-dimensional links between members.”
Learning from business
In building a global strategy, Gore said that universities will need to take into account factors distilled from current corporate strategic thinking. He said universities rarely have the type of funding that is needed to establish full campuses overseas, and respond to the problem in many ways.
“Sometimes, there is a pull effect when a local institution sets up with the aim of bringing a particular type of institution into the location. An example of this is the British University in Dubai.
“Alternatively, in the campus set up by Liverpool in China the impetus was from the UK.”
And he was dismissive of the ‘comprehensive internationalisation’ strategy set out in a NAFSA publication by John Hudzik, who defines it as “a commitment, confirmed through action, to infuse international and comparative perspectives throughout the teaching, research and service missions of higher education. It shapes institutional ethos and values and touches the entire higher education enterprise”.
Gore said: “Hudzik sees universities working in an increasingly borderless space, where ideas are almost completely free to move around the world and interact. Grand goals indeed, but comprehensive internationalisation cannot be cast as a strategy in itself but more as a vision or mission.
"The NAFSA document has much that is useful to say about being clear on goals...but it offers little help to conceptualising these as realisable strategies that address the real constraints most universities struggle with."
He argued that universities will have to take into account factors that emerge from current corporate strategic thinking, in the form of various ‘models of engagement’.
“It would be useful for universities to have access to a number of such models as a frame of reference for the creation of their own strategy.”
Three models of engagement
His paper to the OBHE forum sets out three basic models of engagement:
    A global network established through joint programmes, research and exchanges throughout its membership.
    Focused networks created through a deeply rooted and multidimensional engagement with a few locations judged to be compatible with their values and competencies in regions dubbed to be strategically important for that university.
    Development of global products based on an assumption that a coherent and similarly motivated audience can be found at different locations around the world.
Gore cited the University of London international programmes as one example, and said that many other universities approach a global model through a global network of franchised programmes.
“Franchise agreements vary considerably but usually involve delegating all or most of the teaching as well as elements of the assessment process, which are then controlled through a validation or moderation process.
"Its main risk lies in the degree to which there is demonstrable quality control at a distance, as the recent problems the University of Wales have suffered amply demonstrate.”
“Universities face an increasingly competitive and risk-laden global environment,” Gore said.
While corporate strategies are clearly not entirely relevant to the world of universities, many messages from the strategic processes developed for the corporate world are highly pertinent. If the corporate world needs to be seen as a good citizen then this must be even more the case with universities.
Models of engagement that build in learning, complexity and community responsiveness and move beyond mere short-term business models are increasingly necessary.
* Tim Gore's report is titled Higher Education across Borders: Models of engagement and lessons from corporate strategy. It was published by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education this month.

Together with the International Ad Hoc Expert Group on Re-thinking Internationalization, the IAU launches: Affirming Academic Values in Internationalization of Higher Education: A Call for Action. This Call for Action shines a light on the changing process of internationalization, its many benefits and potential adverse impacts, whilst also outlining how institutions can re-center the process of internationalization around academic fundamentals.
Comments, reactions, suggestion for how to turn the principles of the Call into actions and offers of endorsement for the Call can be sent to the IAU at: iau@iau-aiu.net with subject line stating ‘the Call’.
Purpose
This document acknowledges the substantial benefits of the internationalization of higher education but also draws attention to potentially adverse unintended consequences, with a view to alerting higher education institutions to the need to act to ensure that the outcomes of internationalization are positive and of reciprocal benefit to the higher education institutions and the countries concerned.
Internationalization - An evolving concept
1. The internationalization of higher education is a dynamic process, continuously shaped and reshaped by the international context in which it occurs. As this context changes, so do the purpose, goals, meanings, and strategies of internationalization. Over the past half century, the world has changed dramatically as a result of the demise of colonial hegemonies, the end of the Cold War, the rise of new economic powers, and new regional alliances.
2. Globalisation is now the most important contextual factor shaping the internationalization of higher education. Globalisation is characterized by interdependence among nations and manifested in the economic, political, social, cultural, and knowledge spheres. Central to globalization are the increased mobility of goods, services, and people and the accelerating use of information and communication technologies to bridge time and space in unprecedented ways and at continually decreasing costs.
3. Globalization gives an international dimension to all aspects of our lives, communities, and professions. In higher education, it has led to intensified mobility of ideas, students and academic staff and to expanded possibilities for collaboration and global dissemination of knowledge. It has also introduced new aims, activities and actors engaged in internationalization.
4. Institutions, countries and regions in different parts of the world and at different times pursue a variety of goals and participate in diverse ways in the higher education internationalization process. Examples, such as Africa under colonial rule, where access to higher education meant travelling abroad to attend one of the universities of the colonial power, or more recently the Bologna Process, which is radically changing the higher education landscape in Europe through internationally coordinated reforms, illustrate how internationalization fulfils different purposes and brings different rewards and challenges.
5. The goals of internationalization are continuously evolving, ranging from educating global citizens, building capacity for research, to generating income from international student tuition fees and the quest to enhance institutional prestige. New forms of internationalization such as branch campuses abroad, distance learning programs with a global reach, international educational hubs and networks now complement traditional initiatives such as student and staff mobility, curriculum change and international institutional linkages for teaching and research. New institutional players, in particular new private sector providers, have entered the scene.
6. Although the risk of brain drain remains a serious concern in some parts of the world, some countries are using international student mobility to expand their higher education capacity and capabilities. Governments and institutions are creating formal links with academic talent with their own Diasporas to promote brain circulation. And although uneven global flows of talent will remain an issue of consequence, in the long run, some of its worst impacts can be attenuated as a wider array of nations develop capacity and opportunity at home. Higher education internationalization can play a major role in developing such capacities and opportunities broadly throughout the world.
7. In short, internationalization today is remarkably different from what it was in the first half of the 20th century, in the 1960s or 1980s. A widening of drivers of higher education internationalization has had the effect of making internationalization more of an institutional imperative. The balancing of multiple intended outcomes while preserving essential institutional core values and missions is both a challenge and an opportunity. Internationalization is taking place in a radically new, complex, differentiated, and globalized context. The resulting changes in goals, activities, and actors have led to a re-examination of terminology, conceptual frameworks and previous understandings and, more importantly, to an increased but healthy questioning of internationalization’s values, purposes, goals and means.
The changing nature of internationalization in the context of globalization
8. Irrespective of contextual differences within and between countries, nearly all higher education institutions worldwide are engaged in international activities and are seeking to expand them. Engaging with the world is now considered part of the very definition of quality in education and research.
9. The many enduring academic benefits of internationalization are widely recognized as fundamental. The most noteworthy include, among many others: Improved quality of teaching and learning as well as research. Deeper engagement with national, regional, and global issues and stakeholders. Better preparation of students as national and global citizens and as productive members of the workforce. Access for students to programs that are unavailable or scarce in their home countries. Enhanced opportunities for faculty improvement and, through mobility, decreased risk of academic ‘inbreeding’.
Possibility to participate in international networks to conduct research on pressing issues at home and abroad and benefit from the expertise and perspectives of researchers from many parts of the world. Opportunity to situate institutional performance within the context of international good practice. Improved institutional policy-making, governance, student services, outreach, and quality assurance through sharing of experiences across national borders.
10. At the same time, the new world of higher education is characterized by competition for prestige, talent and resources on both national and global scales. National and international rankings are driving some universities to prioritize policies and practices that help them rise in the rankings. At many institutions, internationalization is now part of a strategy to enhance prestige, global competitiveness and revenue. As higher education has in some respects become a global ‘industry’, so has internationalization of higher education become, in some quarters, a competition in which commercial and other interests sometimes overshadow higher education’s fundamental academic mission and values. Competition is in danger of displacing collaboration as the foundation for internationalization.
Possible adverse consequences of internationalization
11. As internationalization of higher education evolves and grows in importance, a number of potentially adverse consequences of the process have begun to appear. These include particular risks for some institutions, uneven benefits, and asymmetrical power relations. Frequently noted are the following concerns: The prevalence of English, though driven by the advantages of having a common medium of communication, has the potential to diminish the diversity of languages studied or used to deliver higher education. The widespread use of English may thus lead to cultural homogenization and finding solutions for these adverse impacts, even though recognized, is difficult. Global competition may diminish the diversity of institutional models of what constitutes quality higher education. The pursuit of a single model of excellence embodied in the notion of a “world-class university,” usually narrowly defined as excellence in research, may result in the concentration of scarce national resources in a few or a single institution to the detriment of a diverse national system of higher education institutions, fit for diverse national purposes. This risk is potentially present everywhere, but is particularly acute for developing countries. Brain drain may continue or even accelerate, undermining the capacity of developing countries and their institutions to retain the talent needed for their prosperity, cultural advancement, and social well-being. Large-scale international student recruitment, at times using questionable and even unethical practices, may cause a variety of problems, such as brain drain. Also, the presence of large numbers of international students may result in misconceptions about decreased opportunities for domestic students or inadvertently feed prejudice about foreigners. This can overshadow the highly positive intellectual and intercultural benefits that international students bring to the classroom, campus, and communities in which they study and live.
The growth of transnational programs and creation of branch campuses raises a number of questions including how these enhance the educational capacity of host nations over the long-term, and how able they are to deliver on the promise of an education comparable to that delivered by the sponsoring institution in its home country. A foreign educational presence, with its perceived prestige, has the potential to disadvantage local higher education institutions striving to respond to national needs. Some host nations experience difficulty regulating the presence, activity and quality of foreign programs. As the pursuit of institutional reputation, stimulated by rankings, gains in importance among the goals of internationalization, the selection of international partners may be driven more by the desire to gain prestige by association than by actual interest in cooperation. Such a trend carries the risk of exclusion for many important and high quality institutions from international partnerships. The asymmetry of relations between institutions, based on access to resources for the development and implementation of internationalization strategies, can lead to the pursuit of goals that advantage the better –resourced institutions and can result in unevenly shared benefits.
In noting these adverse consequences, the inherent value of internationalization of higher education is not being called into question. On the contrary, the goal of raising awareness of these potential risks among the institutions of higher education is to ensure that action is taken to avoid them.
Affirming values underpinning internationalization: A call to higher education institutions
12. The benefits of internationalization are clear. In pursuing internationalization, however, it is incumbent on institutions of higher education everywhere to make every effort to avoid or at least mitigate its potential adverse consequences.
13. The prevailing context for higher education internationalization described in this document requires all institutions to revisit and affirm internationalization’s underlying values, principles and goals, including but not limited to: intercultural learning; inter-institutional cooperation; mutual benefit; solidarity; mutual respect; and fair partnership. Internationalization also requires an active, concerted effort to ensure that institutional practices and programs successfully balance academic, financial, prestige and other goals. It requires institutions everywhere to act as responsible global citizens, committed to help shape a global system of higher education that values academic integrity, quality, equitable access, and reciprocity.
14. In designing and implementing their internationalization strategies, higher education institutions are called upon to embrace and implement the following values and principles: Commitment to promote academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and social responsibility. Pursuit of socially responsible practices locally and internationally, such as equity in access and success, and non-discrimination. Adherence to accepted standards of scientific integrity and research ethics.
Placement of academic goals such as student learning, the advancement of research, engagement with the community, and addressing global problems at the centre of their internationalization efforts. Pursuit of the internationalization of the curriculum as well as extra curricula activities so that non-mobile students, still the overwhelming majority, can also benefit from internationalization and gain the global competences they will need. Engagement in the unprecedented opportunity to create international communities of research, learning, and practice to solve pressing global problems. Affirmation of reciprocal benefit, respect, and fairness as the basis for partnership. Treatment of international students and scholars ethically and respectfully in all aspects of their relationship with the institution. Pursuit of innovative forms of collaboration that address resource differences and enhance human and institutional capacity across nations. Safeguarding and promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity and respecting local concerns and practices when working outside one’s own nation. Continuous assessment of the impacts – intended and unintended, positive and negative – of internationalization activities on other institutions. Responding to new internationalization challenges through international dialogue that combines consideration of fundamental values with the search for practical solutions to facilitate interaction between higher education institutions across borders and cultures while respecting and promoting diversity.
15. These values are neither slogans nor vague abstractions. They should be applied in very concrete ways to institutional policy and practice. As institutions develop their internationalization strategies, they should be clear and transparent about why they are undertaking a particular initiative, how it relates to their academic mission and values, and what mechanisms can be put in place to avoid possible negative consequences. Open discussion, within and across institutions and associations and with governments, should keep fundamental academic goals and principles in the foreground, in the context of rapid change, complex realities, and ever-mounting pressures of competition and limited resources.
Next steps
16. This Call to Higher Education Institutions is but a first step in IAU’s engagement to collaborate with its Member Organizations and other international education associations and partners to provide institutional guidance and examples of good practice in internationalization. IAU will now turn to helping institutions translate these principles and values into everyday practice.

By Madeleine F Green. Conversations at the recent “Going Global 2012” meeting made it abundantly clear that there are as many drivers of internationalisation as there are forms it takes. Globalisation is reshaping the landscape, with technology facilitating new approaches to internationalisation and intensifying existing ones; global competition is altering the rules of the game.
Participants described a great variety of internationalisation activities, ranging from the more ‘traditional’ partnerships for teaching and research to the business of recruiting and retaining international students, or twinning and franchising programmes. Although gatherings of this sort tend not to question the basic premises or assumptions underlying the initiatives that are being proudly presented by panellists and exhibitors, at this event the International Association of Universities (IAU) provided an opportunity for more critical reflection. In a series of very well attended sessions titled “Rethinking Internationalisation: Who benefits and what risks?”, the IAU in partnership with the “Going Global” host the British Council, engaged attendees in a dialogue about the changing face(s) of internationalisation and the need to re-assert core academic values.
The sessions began with a plenary panel, and then broke into working groups around six broad themes – clarity of concept, drivers of internationalisation, the place of student mobility, global responsibility, internationalisation as a catalyst for reform, and the internationalised university – whose chairs later reported on their discussions in a closing plenary. These sessions grew out of a current IAU initiative to prompt institutions around the world to engage in serious reflection about the drivers, rationales and means used for their internationalisation efforts, and the likely impact on institutions themselves and on other universities, nations and the shape of the global higher education landscape. This initiative will first result in a framing document to be released later this spring.
Many drivers at work
Higher education institutions engage in internationalisation for a variety of reasons, and generally several different drivers are at work simultaneously. The following brief list, in no particular order, reveals a wide range of drivers

• To prepare students for ‘global citizenship’ (which can be defined in many ways).
• To prepare students for the global workforce.
• To enhance the quality of teaching and research.
• To strengthen institutional capacity.
• To enhance prestige and visibility.
• To generate revenue.
• To contribute to local or regional economic development.
• To contribute to knowledge production on global issues.
• To solve global problems.
• To increase international understanding and promote peace.

The motivations for pursuing internationalisation differ by region, country and institution. It comes as no surprise that, according to IAU research, enhancing institutional capacity in research figures prominently among the drivers in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. In some countries and regions, government policies play a prominent role in shaping internationalisation; for example, by providing incentives for institutions to recruit international students (or imposing barriers to such recruitment) or by policies that invite in foreign providers. At the institutional level, internationalisation drivers are shaped by a number of factors, including national government policies, institutional needs and priorities, and stakeholders’ needs and interests.
Some drivers are more important or more explicit than others. For example, it is often difficult to discern on the basis of institutional statements the extent to which the push for international students is actually driven by the espoused value of internationalising the campus or by the need for revenue. Similarly, it is not necessarily clear either to institutional insiders or outsiders the extent to which a programme or branch campus abroad is fuelled by the desire to build capacity in the host country or to establish a global footprint for the mother campus.
Drivers raise questions about purpose and values
This mixture of drivers can raise issues that reflect a deeper set of questions about institutional purpose and values. Universities around the world live in a competitive environment, where resources and prestige drive institutional strategies and behaviours. That is a reality that cannot be denied or avoided. This complex higher education environment requires a higher level of introspection and honesty both within institutions and among partners. When there is no consensus within an institution about the mix and hierarchy of internationalisation goals, implementation will be rocky and success hard to define. Similarly, when international partners are not clear with each other, the potential for understanding and mutual benefit is greatly diminished.
One practical way for institutions to achieve greater clarity and transparency about their goals is to look at their definitions and metrics of success. Such metrics indicate what is valued; they align with the real goals. If the number of international students is the most important measure of success, without regard to the geographic or disciplinary distribution, that suggests that the underlying goal is revenue, not the frequently professed goal of impact on campus internationalisation. Similarly, if an institution aims to develop global citizens but does not have any metrics to ascertain the extent to which this being achieved, it calls into question how important that goal really is.
Admittedly, it is easier to measure the level of activity than its impact. But unless institutions make the effort to be clear about the drivers and related expected impacts of internationalisation, they will either be deluded or uninformed about their success.
* Madeleine F Green is a consultant and senior fellow at the International Association of Universities and at NAFSA: The Association of International Educators.

By Nigel Thrift. Over the last week, I have been part of a U.K. higher-education delegation to South Korea, visiting universities like Seoul National University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist) and meeting senior representatives from many other South Korean universities. South Korean universities are pushing hard to make an even bigger impact in the world and, at least to judge by rankings, confidence levels and the state of their campuses, they are clearly succeeding. The South Korean higher-education system is in overdrive although it still has some problems, particularly a fall in tuition fee income, driven by electoral politics and a substantial demographic downturn which will have rapid impacts on the numbers of domestic students arriving at university.
Whatever the case, South Korean higher education is internationalizing rapidly. That internationalization takes two forms. First, there is the internationalization of students. With so many students choosing to pursue higher education, South Korea has always sent many of its students overseas, most notably to the United States. South Korea is the third largest source country for international students. But it is now determinedly pushing for more foreign students to come to South Korea. The British students that I spoke to who had made the journey all spoke positively.
Second, there is the internationalization of research which is being driven by impressively large amounts of government financing. South Korea is making a determined push to increase its research profile. Through the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, which tends to support applied research, and the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, which tends to back more basic research, considerable money for research is on offer, some of which can be shared or built on by foreign partners. In particular, there is currently a big push into basic research via the so-called Institute for Basic Science located in Daejeon whose avowed intent is to rival institutions like MPG in Germany and RIKEN in Japan. There is also a “world class university” project that finances South Korean universities to invite world-renowned academics.
So far as international reach is concerned, the South Korean higher-education system has been dominated by links with U.S. universities and, to a lesser extent, Germany, but the times are changing and South Korean universities are seeking more diversity of influence. It was heartwarming to get a sense of how keen South Korean academics were to cooperate more widely, as evidenced by a simultaneous cell-cycle symposium taking place in South Korea on mitosis which included luminaries like Tim Hunt and Kim Nasmyth.
Add to all this, the pre-eminence of South Korean firms like Samsung and LG that work closely with South Korean higher education through their research institutes and it is possible to see a heady brew emerging which can fuel continuing success. Already, the Nature Publishing Index shows the way in which South Korean universities are rising in science. There is clearly more to come.

As internationalisation in HE grows, we must do more to steer these bright minds towards solving regional problems, says Rajika Bhandari.
Only 1% of the world has access to a higher education, and the figure for secondary education isn't much better at 10%. Even in America around a third students enrolled in college never complete their degrees, and the same proportion of all first years undergraduates have taken at least one remedial course in reading and/or mathematics. Clearly, we are living in times that are fraught with multiple problems affecting entire communities and societies. Against this backdrop, as more than 3.7 million young students leave their home countries' borders in search of an international education and with so many countries and organisations investing vast amounts of human and financial resources in promoting a global education, the question must be asked: what are the benefits of an international education?
What is to be gained from the mobility of students and what local or global problems can international education help solve? This question goes deeper and can be traced to the vast divide between two seemingly overlapping yet disparate fields: international education as those of us in the exchange or internationalisation field know it, and international education in the field of international development. Experts and practitioners in these two fields need to speak to each other more. In my experience they barely communicate.
Those of us working in international higher education rarely pose critical questions about the broader implications and relevance of internationalisation in providing solutions for global, national or community-level problems. To what extent are we, for example, guiding our future internationally mobile students to think about the Millennium Development Goals, or the Education for All initiative, or the Dakar Framework for Action as a frame of reference for selecting their future course of study and professional career?
Although international service learning is a time-honoured tradition in western countries, it exists for the most part on the fringes of formal higher education and training. But there are some exemplary programs that have attempted to bridge this divide, and where an international experience is seen as a critical pathway to addressing development issues. One such program is the Ford Foundation's international fellowship program that draws upon talented individuals from marginalised groups from around the world to use their educational experience to address key social issues. Another example of an initiative that encourages the application of international learning to everyday problems is Engineers without Borders, which provides US engineering undergraduates with community development opportunities abroad. As one step towards documenting these types of activities, the Institute of International Education has recently expanded its Open Doors Study Abroad Survey to collect data on internships abroad (and other types of applied learning experiences) both for credit and non-credit, in the private and public sectors.
Scaling up and replicating these types of initiatives is not an easy endeavour. From a research perspective, the major challenge, of course, is assessing the ultimate impact of higher education mobility or educational exchanges. How can we measure the contributions of international education to solving global problems? In addition to reporting on international students' fields of study, should we also attempt to synthesise mobility data by areas of potential impact such as public health, education and the environment? These are just some of many questions that need to be addressed. The selection of a study destination and field of study will ultimately be an individual one, driven by personal and professional aspirations, but we can all play a role in shaping the next generation's thinking about how their learning can help solve some of the world's most endemic problems. But for that to happen our field first needs to rethink and redefine our current understanding of internationalisation.
Rajika Bhandari is deputy vice president of research and evaluation at the Institute of International Education, New York and directs the Institute's Center for Academic Mobility Research. This article was originally published by the International Association of Universities, in its magazine IAU Horizons.

By Marielk. The GEEP project, hosted by Oslo and Akershus University College, is having their closing conference in Oslo on 11-13th of September 2012 with a title “Rethinking internationalization and university collaboration: Academics, actors and analysis“.
The conference features a number of keynote speakers, amongst else Linda Chisholm who works as a policymaker in South Africa, Nazir Carrim from University of Western Cape in South Africa, and Brian Denman from University of New England in Australia.
The call for abstracts has been announced and the deadline for sending in 250 word abstracts is 1st of June. Please find more information about the application procedures by downloading the announcement here.
The conference has a focus on North-South dynamics and the need to redefine and critically analyze internationalisation, and the organisers have put these key questions as guidance:

•  How do actors and academics understand internationalization?
• How can North-South-South university collaboration best lead to internationalization?
• What are some of the challenges experienced in doing university collaboration?
• What are the challenges in working across cultures and academic traditions in North-South-South collaborative projects?
• What are the benefits or best practices in North-South-South collaborative projects?
• What theoretical frameworks can facilitate our understanding of internationalization?
• Who are the other actors in internationalization of higher education institutions?

Please note that there is no conference fee.
The GEEP project is funded by the Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education (NUFU). The NUFU program is administered by the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education (SIU). You can find more information about the project on the project website.