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Definitions
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| Internationalization
of higher education |
One of the most commonly
used definitions of internationalisation of
higher education was initially elaborated and subsequently adapted by
Jane Knight and Hans de Wit and in its most recent iteration (Knight
2005) reads as follows: “the process
of integrating an international,
intercultural and/or global dimension into the goals, functions
(teaching/learning, research, services) and delivery of higher
education”.
This is the most broad and all-encompassing concept that integrates
many different activities such as all forms of academic mobility,
research collaboration, international development projects in higher
education, curricular aspects in terms of the scope of programs and
courses (area studies) offered or changes in curriculum of specific
disciplines.
According to OECD, it is “the
complex of processes whose combined
effect, whether planned or not, is to enhance the international
dimension of the experience of higher education in universities and
similar educational institutions”. |
| Cross-border,
borderless or transnational education |
Increasingly used to focus
more specifically on those educational
activities that involve some movement across borders, concepts such as
cross-border, borderless or transnational education are often employed
interchangeably. They enjoy several definitions.
For UNESCO, these concepts cover “all
types and modes of delivery of
higher education programmes, or sets of courses of study, or
educational services (including those of distance education) in which
the learners are located in a country different from the one where the
awarding institution is based. Such programmes may belong to the
education system of a State different from the State in which it
operates, or may operate independently of any national education system
”. (2005)
According to OECD, they refer to: “situations
where the students,
teachers, programmes, institutions/providers, or course materials cross
national borders”.
In 2005, within the framework of the elaboration of the UNESCO/OECD
Guidelines for Quality Provision in Cross-Border Higher Education, the
two organizations agreed to define cross border higher education as
‘higher education that takes place in
situations where the teacher,
student, programme, institution/provider or course materials cross
national jurisdictional borders. Cross-border education may
include
higher education by public/private and not-for-profit providers.
It
encompasses a wide range of modalities in a continuum from
face-to-face (taking various forms from students travelling abroad and
campuses abroad) to distance learning (using a range of technologies
and including e-learning)". |
| Internationalisation
at Home |
Just as it has become
necessary to carve out, in conceptual terms,
those activities that involve movement, whether it is of people or the
educational opportunity, from other forms of international activities,
the concept of internationalisation at
home has gained in prominence to
underline the fact that there are ways to internationalise higher
education that do not necessitate mobility.
EAIE working with ACA in 2000 defined it as “any internationally
related activity with the exception of outbound student and staff
mobility”. The brevity of this definition by exclusion, hides a
very
rich and diverse approaches to bringing the world into the learning
experience whether in or out of the classroom.
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| Related issues
and concepts |
A word of caution is
required to warn the reader that there are
numerous related terms, issues and trends that can be linked here as
being related to the process of higher education ‘going
international’. We did not use international
education,
intercultural
education, nor did we mention globalisation
or quality
assurance and credentials
recognition, academic mobility,
international development
cooperation in higher education or trade in higher education. All
of
these and others are closely related and often appear in the literature
side by side with the concepts introduced here or are included in the
processes described above. In relation to the trade in higher
education, see below a brief presentation on GATS. We may add to
our
Glossary of Terms as these web pages develop but for now we restrict
the vocabulary to those concepts that IAU is tracking or those that are
readily used in its research and analysis. As IAU adheres to the
notion that globalisation is primarily an economic force that affects
all sectors of activity, including higher education the discussion of
this much debated phenomenon is left outside these pages. It is
undeniable as well that the impact of globalization defined as:
‘forceful changes in the economic,
social, political and cultural
environment, brought about by global competition, the integration of
markets, increasingly dense communication networks, information flows
and mobility’ (Reichert and Wächter, 2000), is felt in most
higher
education systems throughout the world.
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| GATS |
One major impact of globalisation, as defined above, on
higher education is the advent of the view of education as a service, a
commodity, that is not only produced and consumed domestically but also
traded internationally. The General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS) is a set of multilateral, legally enforceable rules
governing international trade in services. Negotiated under the aegis
of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), it came into force in 1995.
For further details, see GATS and Higher
Education.
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