Posted on by e.truong

W2-Scholar Mobility over Student Mobility

One of the more interesting topics I found from this week’s reading was the section on scholar mobility and what types of policies and program are in place for matured academics and researchers to travel abroad. As mentioned in our class discussion, a lot of policies and practices of international higher education are based on the assumption that all higher education students are the traditional undergraduate college aged students. However, I believe that changing the direction and focusing more attentions on graduate students, doctoral candidates and faculty members would be of great value for internationalizing higher education.

In order to meet the demand of higher education in the country there must be enough researchers, lecturers and professors to have a robust faculty at an institution. As noted in the report, having scholar mobility is a way to building higher education capacity in a nation. International higher education policies should definitely do more to expand this population’s access to opportunities abroad for doctoral degrees and for research. Researchers and other doctoral students can diversify the types of programs and expertise they bring with them to the institution. By attracting professors and researcher to their campuses, it can, in turn, attract other students to come to the university. Countries that want to build their capacity in research in and in professors should take on a more active role to pursue these candidates and to bring them to their country. Russia was spotlighted in the Chronicle of Higher Education in November about creating a program that aims to increase the number of scholars and researchers to the country. According to the article, the Russian government has been taking a very active role in recruiting foreign researchers because the government believes that this will help to raise its international rankings. The government hopes to attract researchers by providing tax and benefits incentives for those who are going to be employed at a university and additional grant funding for research.

For countries like Russia, that want to build their capacity, having more scholar mobility oriented policies would benefit them greatly. However, for countries such as the United States that already have such a high concentration of scholars, researchers and institutions, this might not be the best policy approach. In addition, the Chronicle’s article noted that this new incentive program is geared towards attracting scientists, researchers and scholars of Russian origin to return. From this line it seems like Russia wants to bring back the talent that has left their country by offering incentives. However, if the program is so focused on recruit scientists of Russian origin, the country would not have a very diverse population of researchers. It could be that Russia experienced a “Brain Drain” and now wants to bring back the talent they have lost. Achieving the diversity might not be Russia’s aim; but, giving preference to just one ethnicity of scientists and scholars might not allow them to attract the talent they desire.

Russia’s new program is definitely a step in the right direction if the country wants to increase scholar mobility and capacity but the narrowed concentration on scholars of Russian origin might not give the country its optimal results.

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W1: Elaine Truong; Introduction & Response to Readings

Hello everyone! My name is Elaine Truong and I am in my second-to-last semester of the MS-Ed HEA program at Baruch. I went to Hunter College for my undergraduate degree where I majored in political science and minored in English literature. I recently started working as an academic advising coordinator for graduate students at Baruch’s School of Public Affairs. I am interested in higher education policies and law and how these affect disadvantaged students.

This week’s article did a great job in providing us with the overview of international higher education policy: what it meant in the past and what it means presently. From the Altbach article, one of the purposes of internationalizing higher education was to spread peace and diplomacy during or after times of tension and conflict. For example, the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship came about after World War II as a way to foster diplomacy and development in war torn countries or in third world countries that recently received their independence. However, as the Cold War advanced; students and institutions of higher education became political objects in the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The internationalization of higher education was used as a political tool to spread one country’s influence in a region over the other country. Although, the Cold War has officially ended, the use of higher education to increase influence and dominance in the international arena has not ended.

Presently, the argument for the internationalization of higher education, according to the Oxford Trends report, is to allow students to gain worldly experiences and to develop soft skills that employers will find desirable. The underlying narrative is essentially the same, which is to have students from one region dominate the job economy and thus become the dominant international power. Higher education has become a means to an end, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I do agree with the presumption that students who “study abroad” are able to develop certain soft skills that are valuable to employers in an ever-expanding and inter-connected world. These skills are important for students, but what worries me is that students from other regions are more likely to get this experience than American students. As the Oxford Trends note, the most mobile students are students from Asia, specifically China. Chinese students chose to study abroad in higher proportions in comparison other regional students. Many of these students chose to study in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Therefore, is an  imbalance of students between countries that send out the most students and those that take in the most students. It is in the interest of the US to try and correct this imbalance of students who study aboard with new policies and programs that allow students to be competitive on the international level. I found the Green article the most interesting because it identifies this imbalance and it puts into perspective how few US institutions of higher education are actually thinking about internationalizing. At School of Public Affairs, where I work, the focus has continued to be internationalization. So, it is very interesting to know that our school is part of the minority who are focused on internationalizing

Overall, I found the articles very eye-opening this week and really enjoyed the focus on the policy trends in international higher education.

References

Altbach, P.G. and Wit, H.D. (2015).  Internationalization and global tension: Lessons from history. International Higher Education, 81, 2-4.

Green, M.F. (2015). Is the United States the best in the world? Not in internationalization. International Higher Education, 81, 7-9.

University of Oxford. (2015) International trends in higher education 2015.