The 3rd Week’s reading was the 2nd half of “Internationalizing Higher Education Worldwide”. As with the 1st half of the reading it continued to provide detailed insights into the policies and programs that are currently in place in relation to the internationalizing of higher education. The 2nd half of the reading included the final three policy typologies, a discussion on assessing the effectiveness of policies and the author’s final thoughts on the topic.
The 3rd policy type in the reading was cross-border education. Cross-Border education is defined as “the movement of people, programmes, providers, curricula, projects, research and services across national or regional jurisdictional borders.” One of the forms of cross-border education is branch campuses. An example of a branch campus that I brought up in our class discussion was, New York University (NYU). The link I have embedded is to an article about NYU’s “Global Ambitions”. The former President of NYU John Sexton, has referred to NYU as a Global Network University. He viewed the three campuses and study away sites as an “organic circulatory system.” The article discusses the current branch campuses as well as opposition from faculty and students about the expansion program. NYU’s cross-border education would perhaps fall under two of the initiatives that the authors discusses in the section: one, create educational “hubs” and two, encourage domestic institutions to establish campuses and programs abroad.
The 4th policy type was Internationalization at Home, the author gives examples of how the United States is trying to implement the internationalization of curriculum. The Department of Education is focusing on foreign language and area studies education. These are the most obvious choices but if you look at the description of curricular issues that are offered in the section, it seems that the Dept. of Education and higher education institutions should include all subject areas in order to internationalize their curriculum. Faculty cooperation would be very important when trying to change the curriculum to include “…global focused content and perspectives…”.
The final policy type was Comprehensive Internationalization Strategies. This section dealt with policies and programs that are in place by an entire country. An example in this section are the plans in place by the European Union and Canada. Eventhough the authors give few examples for each program or policy, I thought it was interesting to note that the United States doesn’t have a comprehensive higher education internationalization plan/policy in place. The lack of policy/plan can be connected to the fact that our country doesn’t have a comprehensive education plan or policy for primary and secondary education. This connection maybe small but if you look at other countries who do have comprehensive internationalization strategies in place you will see that these countries have learning goals/outcomes that have been established for many years. They may change over the years but the changes are perhaps not based on which political group is in charge.
To conclude the report, the authors offered summaries and final thoughts about the internationalization of higher education. It is interesting that their final recommendations include the need to shift the focus to non-mobile students. These students have to benefit from the internationalization of higher education. As we discussed in class and gathered from the readings the biggest way higher education has been internationalized is by the mobility of students; students travelling abroad to take credit bearing courses. Studying abroad can be too costly for students so looking to include ways to bring an international education to the non-mobile student is important.
Some questions that I still have after the reading include how are higher education institutions -colleges and universities directly involved in implementing the programs mentioned? Also Africa isn’t used a direct example of any policy or plan related to the internationalization of higher education. Is that because the programs don’t exist or are very limited? Africa is mentioned in relation to Germany and China. These two countries have programs in place to work with colleges and universities in African countries.
Overall the reading gave a great introduction to the policies and programs geared toward the internationalizing of higher education.
Sources
American Council on Education, Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement. (2014) Internationalizing higher education worldwide: national policies and programs. Washington, DC: Brajkovic, Laura; Helms, Robin; Mihut, Georgiana; Rumbley, Laura
Redden, Elizabeth. (March 11th, 2013) Global Ambitions. Inside Higher Ed. www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/11/nyu-establishes-campuses-and-sites-aroundglobe
Hi Jonelle,
Thanks for your post! I also thought the example of adding language and culture to the curriculum as a way to promote internationalization at home was an interesting topic. In the US, there is no federal requirement for curriculum, resulting in varying requirements in primary and secondary education even within certain states. An article from the Pew Research Center notes, “The U.S. does not have a nationwide foreign-language mandate at any level of education” (Devlin 2015).
Only a quarter of the US population is able to converse in a second language, compared with about half of Europe’s population. What’s more, Devlin (2015) writes that “Within this subset of multilinguals who are well-versed in a non-English language, 89% acquired these skills in the childhood home, compared with 7% citing school as their main setting for language acquisition.” This is no surprise when you look at the lack of a national language requirement in high school or post-secondary education in the US. In contrast, many countries in Europe have a requirement for students to study two foreign languages, and children start studying language at a much earlier age than here. Perhaps if students were exposed to internationalization at a younger age, and to use your suggestion, in a broad array of subjects, they would grow up with an interest to further these skills.
Devlin, K. (13 July 2015). Learning a foreign language a ‘must’ in Europe, not so in America. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/13/learning-a-foreign-language-a-must-in-europe-not-so-in-america/