HE-D03 — Internationalization of Higher Education

Course Code: HE-D03  |  School: School of Higher Education  |  Cluster: Institutional Development

Level: Advanced  |  Estimated duration: 6 weeks (approximately 40 hours)  |  Language: English  |  Certificate: Professional Certificate (non-degree)  |  Format: Self-paced with AI support under human supervision

Overview

Internationalisation is stated as a strategic priority by almost every university in the world, and it means radically different things in each. For some it is recruitment revenue; for others research collaboration, curriculum reform, staff mobility, branch campuses or diplomatic positioning. Jane Knight’s definitional work is used here to insist that the word be specified before it is pursued.

The course maintains a critical posture throughout. Altbach and Knight’s analysis of motivations and realities shows how frequently internationalisation rhetoric about global citizenship coexists with financial dependence on a single recruitment market. Sharon Stein’s work on critical internationalisation studies raises the harder question of whether the enterprise reproduces colonial patterns of knowledge flow, and learners are expected to engage with it rather than to note it politely.

Practically, learners work on partnership design, internationalisation at home, transnational provision and risk. The concept of internationalisation at home developed by Beelen and Jones is given substantial weight, since it addresses the great majority of students who will never be mobile and who are otherwise excluded from the benefits internationalisation claims to deliver.

Learning outcomes

On completion, a successful learner will be able to:

1. Define internationalisation precisely for a given institution and distinguish its rationales from its stated rhetoric.
2. Analyse the global flows of students, staff, research and provision that structure the field.
3. Design and govern international partnerships, including due diligence and exit provisions.
4. Develop internationalisation at home through curriculum, pedagogy and campus experience.
5. Assess transnational education models, including branch campuses and franchised provision, for quality and risk.
6. Evaluate internationalisation critically for colonial patterns, extractive collaboration and dependence.
7. Construct an internationalisation strategy with defined rationales, priorities, risks and success measures.

Who this course is for

International office directors and staff, deans with international portfolios, partnership managers, curriculum leaders, and policy staff in ministries and agencies responsible for internationalisation policy.

Prerequisites

Institutional experience in higher education. This is an advanced course; HE-F05 Higher Education Policy and Systems provides helpful comparative grounding.

Syllabus

Module 1 — Defining Internationalisation and Its Rationales

Internationalisation functions as a container word, and strategies built on it typically pursue several incompatible goals at once. This module forces definition and exposes the gap between stated and operative rationales.

Lessons. 1.1 Knight’s definition and the process conception  ·  1.2 Academic, economic, political and social rationales  ·  1.3 Stated rhetoric versus revealed institutional priority  ·  1.4 Specifying internationalisation for one institution

Deliverable. A diagnostic note comparing one institution’s stated internationalisation rationale with the rationale revealed by its spending and staffing.

Module 2 — Global Flows and Competition

Student mobility, research collaboration and provision flow along patterned routes shaped by language, wealth, visa policy and historical relationship. The module maps those patterns and their volatility.

Lessons. 2.1 Student mobility flows, sending and receiving markets  ·  2.2 Research collaboration networks and co-authorship patterns  ·  2.3 Global competition, rankings and national positioning strategies  ·  2.4 Geopolitical disruption, visa policy and market concentration risk

Deliverable. An analytical brief mapping one institution’s international dependencies and quantifying its concentration risk.

Module 3 — Partnerships and Due Diligence

Most international partnership agreements are signed with enthusiasm and reviewed with regret. This module builds selection, due diligence and governance before signature.

Lessons. 3.1 Partnership typologies from exchange to joint degree  ·  3.2 Due diligence: financial, academic, reputational and legal  ·  3.3 Agreement drafting, governance structures and review cycles  ·  3.4 Terminating partnerships and protecting enrolled students

Deliverable. A design artefact: a partnership due diligence framework and draft governance structure for one proposed international partnership.

Module 4 — Internationalisation at Home

The majority of students never study abroad, and internationalisation that reaches only the mobile minority delivers its benefits to those who need them least. This module addresses curriculum and campus.

Lessons. 4.1 Beelen and Jones on internationalisation at home  ·  4.2 Internationalising the curriculum beyond adding foreign examples  ·  4.3 Intercultural competence, virtual exchange and collaborative online learning  ·  4.4 Integrating international students rather than merely enrolling them

Deliverable. An evaluation report presenting an internationalised curriculum revision for one programme, with explicit intercultural learning outcomes.

Module 5 — Transnational Provision and Critical Perspectives

Branch campuses and franchised provision extend the institution into jurisdictions with different academic freedom, labour and regulatory conditions. The module examines both the operational and the ethical questions.

Lessons. 5.1 Branch campuses, franchising and validated provision  ·  5.2 Quality assurance across jurisdictions and equivalence of award  ·  5.3 Academic freedom, host-state constraint and institutional complicity  ·  5.4 Critical internationalisation studies and the colonial critique

Deliverable. An implementation plan for a transnational provision proposal including a quality assurance model, an academic freedom risk assessment and stated red lines.

Module 6 — Capstone: An Internationalisation Strategy

The capstone produces a strategy with specified rationales, prioritised activities, honest risk assessment and a substantive engagement with the critical literature. Rhetorical internationalisation is penalised.

Lessons. 6.1 Establishing rationale and baseline  ·  6.2 Prioritising activity against capability  ·  6.3 Assessing dependence and risk  ·  6.4 Answering the critical objections

Deliverable. A 3,000-word internationalisation strategy for one named institution, including rationale, dependency and risk analysis, partnership approach, internationalisation-at-home plan and a response to the critical internationalisation literature.

Assessment

Pass mark 70 per cent. All assessed components must be attempted. Every mark in this course is issued by a human assessor; no assessment outcome is generated automatically.

Rubric criteria

Each assessed artefact is marked against four criteria at four levels (distinction, pass with merit, pass, fail).

1. Definitional precision. Internationalisation is specified for the institution rather than invoked as a value.
2. Risk analysis. Dependencies, concentration and geopolitical exposure are quantified and addressed.
3. Inclusiveness. Provision for non-mobile students is treated as central rather than residual.
4. Critical engagement. Colonial, extractive and academic freedom critiques are answered substantively.

Reading list

Core. Knight, J. (2008) Higher Education in Turmoil: The Changing World of Internationalization. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

• Altbach, P. G. and Knight, J. (2007) ‘The Internationalization of Higher Education: Motivations and Realities’, Journal of Studies in International Education, 11(3–4), pp. 290–305.
• de Wit, H., Hunter, F., Howard, L. and Egron-Polak, E. (2015) Internationalisation of Higher Education. Brussels: European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies.
• Beelen, J. and Jones, E. (2015) ‘Redefining Internationalization at Home’, in Curaj, A. et al. (eds.) The European Higher Education Area: Between Critical Reflections and Future Policies. Cham: Springer, pp. 59–72.
• Marginson, S. (2006) ‘Dynamics of National and Global Competition in Higher Education’, Higher Education, 52(1), pp. 1–39.
• Stein, S. (2021) ‘Critical Internationalization Studies at an Impasse: Making Space for Complexity, Uncertainty, and Complicity in a Time of Global Challenges’, Studies in Higher Education, 46(9), pp. 1771–1784.

Academic integrity and use of AI

Generative AI may be used in this course as a drafting, translation and critique aid, and its use must be disclosed. Every submission carries a short use-of-AI statement naming the tools used, the tasks they performed and the checks the learner applied to the output. Using AI to fabricate data, invent sources, impersonate an interview participant, or produce an artefact the learner cannot explain in a live viva is prohibited.

All citations are verified before submission; a reference that cannot be located by the assessor is treated as fabricated. Fabrication, plagiarism and undisclosed ghost-authorship result in failure of the component and referral to the academic integrity panel. Marks in this course are issued by human assessors, and any learner may be asked to defend a submission orally before a mark is confirmed.