Posted on by A. Olly · 2 Comments

W13: The Future of International Higher Education- China Perspectives

Both readings for this week, International Higher Education‘s Spring 2015 issue and Bridges to the Future, cover the topic of the future of international higher education through essays from scholars in the profession. China was a subject for multiple IHE essays and a feature of the Bridges chapter.

The Bridges China feature, written by Futao Huang, covers some impressive internationalization efforts led by the Chinese government. Initiatives include the funding to send 5000 students annually to study at top foreign universities, the dispatching of 10,000 faculty and researchers abroad to conduct research each year, and the implementation of English language and bilingual programs at universities. There have also been great efforts from the Chinese government and individual institutions to implement joint programs and foreign partnerships.

Huang notes the issues China faces in its pursuit of internationalization, namely the conflicts between foreign institutions, Chinese institutions and the government over policies on internet restrictions, and concerns about the preservation of traditional culture and national identity while opening its doors to global educational opportunities. We have read and discussed these issues previously in class, but it was from a western perspective when discussing cultural clashes and academic freedom. This text was valuable for the insight it provides from a Chinese point of view.

The IHE essay, The Challenge Facing Chinese Higher Education in the Next Two Decades, author Weifang Min provides context for the reputation of higher education in China as “big but not strong”. While worldwide higher ed enrollment grew from 79 million in 1995 to 196 million in 2012, enrollment in China grew at a far higher rate, from 5.2 to 32.6 million. The government and institutions were unable to rep up with the expansion, resulting in crowded facilities, limited equipment and lower teaching quality. Institutions expanded lower cost majors rather than STEM fields, resulting in a mismatch between graduate abilities and the demands of the job market. The Ministry of Education realized their missteps and sought to scale back enrollment and improve programs. Also significant is the high numbers of college graduates entering a slowing economy, making employment a challenge. This essay provides valuable insight into the context of the large number of Chinese students studying abroad. In addition to the prestige of studying at a well regarded foreign institution and the leg up it can provide in the job market, Chinese students may not have access to a high quality education in their desired major at home. Among the policy measures proposed by Min is the promotion of international exchanges and cooperation, and to “assimilate high-quality programs such as NYU Shanghai”. This perspective stands out because NYU Shanghai and similar US-international ventures have been discussed in class, but the concerns were from the lens of US students/faculty/admin studying/teaching/working in China. The establishment of NYU Shanghai from a Chinese point of view may show such cooperations as filling a local need, with a rising middle class, a demand for  higher education, and a local infrastructure that cannot meet enrollment needs. Such partnerships may be an effective way to prevent brain drain.

Posted on by Ben Levine · 6 Comments

W13- Who Actually Receives Access to Online Learning?

As I was reading “Next Two Decades of Higher Education: A Developing Countries Perspective” by Pagan Agarwal, I immediately started questioning how certain systems work, especially in developing countries. One of the most talked about topics these days is the expansion of technology and online learning in higher education. Even though it can be extremely controversial, the arguments are generally pretty straightforward: is online learning cost-effective? Are learning outcomes successfully met? Is online learning as academically effective as in-person learning? These are all very tough questions to answer, but they are very common concerns. I would like to look into online learning in developing countries, and see what kind of questions are posed there.

The primary question I have pertains to access. It seems like a lot of people believe that because there is more and more technology these days, that more and more people have access to it. Is that necessarily true? I’m not so sure. Living in a first-world country means I am fairly privileged when it comes to being exposed to all the technology out there. If I live in a third-world country, or even India, for example, do I automatically have that exposure?Like I said, just because it exists, doesn’t mean everyone sees it. Bowen believes that online learning can be produce adequate learning outcomes because there is “Far greater access to the internet, improvements in internet speed, reductions in storage costs, the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated mobile devices, and other advances have combined with changing mindsets.” With all these advancements, everyone surely could benefit from online learning. Okay, yes, maybe in a developed country. I just can’t see the billion people in Africa reading articles on their phones and the billions of people in Asia writing papers on their laptops at the local coffee shops.

Agarwal seems to be on the same page as Bowen, despite living and working in India. He states, “Online platforms and learning will lead to democratization of knowledge and provide near universal access to higher education, even in the remotest areas and to the disadvantaged sections.” I’m just not convinced (okay, to be fair, I am slightly skeptical by nature). How is all that technology getting to the ‘remotest areas’? Is the government doing it? Is the government going to fund an initiative to provide computers and phones and other forms of technology to the poorest sections of the country? We’re talking about millions and millions of people. Perhaps non-profits or large corporations or wealthy HEI’s will help. Maybe. But do you think that they could provide for that many people? Doubtful. If they are able to help anyone, that’s great, and I am certainly not saying that any efforts are futile. I’m just not a fan of blanket statements- oh, online learning will lead to near universal access- let’s be realistic.

Life is different in third-world countries. The way people work and live their day to day lives is unlike anything we would understand here in the United States. Oftentimes, this lifestyle would make it difficult for these people to get an education, even if it were online. I attended an art event a few months ago in which a documentarian chronicled the lives of Indian migrant workers. For a couple months out of the year, the children of the workers are able to attend a local school, but once the crop cycle is over, they have to go somewhere new. These children will probably never get the opportunity to get a comprehensive elementary and secondary education. Maybe, miraculously, some of these workers are given computers and the opportunity for online learning. Maybe a few are able to learn something and leave that life behind; my suspicion, however, is that they are so entrenched in that tough life, that it would be almost impossible for them to escape. Perhaps I digress, but these are the people who everyone overlooks. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but if India loses a large amount of its workers in one of its major commodities, what happens to the economy? Who produces that commodity?

Anyway, I can’t help but ask questions. All I know is that is is easy to get caught up in these debates, and in my opinion, lose focus on some very important issues. Maybe the plight of the Indian migrant worker isn’t our concern, but maybe it is. If we’re going to study international higher education, I want to know how everyone in the world is affected by it, not just those who are privileged to have access to it.

Posted on by Kristen.VanVleck · 4 Comments

W13 – The Future of Higher Education and Internationalization

In Bridges to the Future, Deardorff, De Wit, and Heyl summarized many topics we have spoken about in this course such as the need for internationalization efforts to fit into the overall strategic vision and mission of the institution, the difficulty of balancing the benefits and risks of internationalization, and the resourcefulness, collaboration, and commercialization resulting from declining public funding.  The authors note that internationalization of education is often looked at from the Western perspective, with developing countries mainly sending students to North America and Europe and acting as beneficiaries of capacity building initiatives.

The publication goes on to highlight challenges and opportunities in different regions of the world.  For example, Professor Gacel-Avila from the University of Guadalajara writes about various challenges to internationalization in Latin American including the low enrollment in postgraduate studies, the lack of government support and funding, and limited foreign language proficiency of the students.  In contrast, Professor Ota of Hitotsubashi University in Japan describes the Japanese government’s involvement in internationalization, first to encourage modernization of the country and later to become a leader in hosting students in the region.

IHE at Twenty: Special 20th Anniversary Feature: Higher Education’s Future offers various perspectives regarding the greatest challenges facing higher education in the next two decades.  Looking at the many opinions of experts in the field, the most common challenge was massification and maintaining quality in an era of increasing enrollments.  Various authors explained that increasing participation in higher education means that the diversity of students will increase and their collective needs will change, making instruction more challenging, assuming the same quality standards apply.  Access to higher education is important, but it gains of an “educated” society are negated if quality is not maintained.  These problems are intensified when also factoring in decreasing public funding.

Another theme that I thought was interesting was the importance of recognizing and rewarding effective teaching.  In “The Challenge of Effective Teaching” Bernasconi notes that this is especially challenging because rankings and reputation are only tied to research outputs, making the teaching responsibilities of professors secondary in importance.  Echoes Salmi, “The overemphasis on research sends the wrong signal that the quality of teaching and learning is not important” (p 17).  In fact an article named Teaching vs. Research from Inside Higher Ed found that out of 122 universities that offer PhD degrees in political science, only 41 of them offer courses on how to become a good teacher and only 28 of those require a course on this topic.  Even the way we are training our graduate students emphasizes research over teaching.  Thoughtful and effective faculty and staff at higher education institutions are crucial to both higher education within a country and intentional, impactful internationalization strategies.

Posted on by j.kalaidis · 4 Comments

W13 – The Future of International Higher Education

This week’s readings discussed the various paths for international higher education to take in the future. Since the field itself is so new — and much of the rapid expansion and development has occurred in the last decade or so — it’s hard to say with any certainty that we can predict where international higher education will go and what the biggest challenges will be in the future. Yet the authors this week did highlight various areas that will continue to present challenges as international higher education becomes more interconnected across the globe.

I agree with Roberta Malee Bassett that equity and access is  “the single, most important challenge facing global higher education for the foreseeable future” (Bassett, 2015, pp. 5). While we in the U.S. have quite a bit of work left to do to increase access to higher education for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds, the gap between the higher education “haves” and “have nots” is even wider in other areas of the world.

Globally, only 1% of people have access to higher education (Deardorff, de Wit, Heyl, 2012, pp. 463). Much of this gap is in the developing world, where inequality is much starker than in developed countries (although the developed world is seeing increasingly high rates of inequality that are approaching that of many developing countries). “In the francophone countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the children of the richest quantile account for 80 perfect of higher education enrollment, while those from the poorest 40 percent of the population group represent only 2 percent of the student population” (Bassett, 2015. pp. 6). Higher education in most areas of the world is still reserved for the wealthy elite, and until access truly expands to the rest of the world’s population, the global community will continue to miss out on millions of possible innovators and contributors to solutions to some of today’s most pressing global challenges.

Another trend to look out for is which path international higher education will take: soft power vs. knowledge diplomacy. We’ve spent a lot of time this semester discussing how governments look at internationalization of higher education not just as an economic opportunity, but also as a way to spread national influence to other ends of the world. While I support many of these initiatives, it’s hard to deny that the ultimate reason why these many internationalization initiatives are implemented is pure national self-interest.

This type of mindset pits nations and universities in competition with one another, rather than in collaboration. “Are the values of self-interest, competition, or dominance going to effectively address issues of world-wide epidemics, terrorism, failed states, the bottom billion in poverty, and climate change? The answer is no. This is based on the reality that solutions to worldwide challenges cannot be achieved by one country alone” (Knight, 2015, pp. 9). Instead, as Jane Knight argues, a model of knowledge diplomacy, which “…focuses on negotiation, mediation, collaboration, compromise, and facilitation” would be a better model for the future of higher education internationalization than the soft power approach, which is “…attached to power dominance, authority, command, and control” (Knight, 2015, pp. 5).

The last theme I want to touch on is the danger of overly commercializing higher education. Unfortunately, a perfect example of this can be traced back to my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. UW-Madison is perhaps most famous in U.S. higher education circles for the “Wisconsin Idea”, which states that “the mission of the UW System is to solve problems and improve people’s lives beyond the classroom. That mission encompasses teaching, research, outreach and public service.” This is why Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker trying to change the language of the University of Wisconsin mission away from the “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” to a mission to “meet the state’s workforce needs” caused such an uproar among Wisconsin residents and alumni.

While Walker ultimately backed off on the proposed change, this mindset towards the university solely existing to serve economic needs has become more dominant both in the U.S. and abroad — and has especially extended to the realm of international higher education. As Christine Musselin argues, the social and knowledge benefits of higher education — rather than just the economic benefits — are “all the more important because obscurantism, ignorance, intolerance, and fanaticism are unfortunately expanding.” The frightening rise of Donald Trump in the U.S., along with the increasing nationalism and identity politics throughout the rest of the world, proves the need for there to be an an increased importance on the social and knowledge benefits of education. As Musselin wrote, “Knowledge is not only important for its economic value but for society” (Musselin, 2015, pp. 13).

These are just a few of the major trends to look out for as international higher education continues to expand. While there are many challenges facing higher education throughout the globe, I’m ultimately optimistic about where we seem to be heading. Thank you, everyone, for such an insightful and engaging semester — I wish you all the best!

Posted on by Zeline Santana

Week 13 , IHE at Twenty and Bridges to the Future

This week we were assigned to read two readings, IHE at Twenty and Bridges to the Future. Both readings expressed many topics that we have all discussed in class including last weeks panel. In the panel a brief discussion regarding soft power was stated and in IHE at Two moving from Soft Power to Knowledge Diplomacy is stated to be important in IHE and its future.

The reading states that “International higher education, in its role as a political actor, is strongly attracted to the concept of soft power. Developed by Joseph Nye about a decade ago, soft power is popularly understood as the ability to influence others and achieve national self-interest(s) through attraction and persuasion rather, than through coercion, military force, or economic sanctions—commonly known as hard power” This section concludes with stating that IHE can move forward if an increase of soft power is achieved, soft powers such as the Fulbright Program have made contributions in IHE. In order for IHE to prevail additional programs as well as a smother process for international students is needed. Being around international students in the HEA program and engaging with them regarding IHE there major concern was job placement and the intensive application and recertification processes they are two do per year in making sure their legal status is up to par. I think overall these have been major contributions that need to be addressed and revamped as well.

Bridges to the Future to the future definitely tackled all topics we have addressed. For example, Changing Rules of Institutional Engagement. Active engagement in IHE is very important for colleges and university to gain support from their community and local government. I believe that overall in the U.S for example should change the rules of IHE and engagement. The active engagement process should be something the U.S government should enforce since they also benefit from the global power IHE brings to the country.