Jane Knight, IAU

In early 2003, the International Association of Universities surveyed its institutional members on the practices and priorities of internationalisation at their institutions. The key messages based on the findings from this survey are the following:

Mobility of students and teachers is considered to be the most important reason for making internationalisation a priority and is identified as the fastest growing aspect of internationalisation.

Brain drain and the loss of cultural identity are seen as the greatest risks of internationalisation.

Student, staff and teacher development, academic standards and quality assurance, and international research collaboration are ranked as the three most important benefits of internationalisation.

Lack of financial support at the institutional level is identified as the most important obstacle for internationalisation.

Distance education and the use of ICTs are noted as key areas for new developments.

Faculty are seen to be the drivers for internationalisation, more active than administrators and students.

While two-thirds of the institutions appear to have an internationalisation policy/strategy in place, only about half of these institutions have budgets and a monitoring framework to support the implementation.

Rationales based on academic considerations for internationalisation ranked higher than rationales based on political or economic considerations.

Intra-regional cooperation is the first geographic priority for Africa, Asia and Europe. Overall, Europe is the most favoured region for collaboration.

Issues requiring attention include development cooperation, quality assurance, accreditation, funding and research cooperation.