Transcript Document

Internationalisation as a lens on the
marketisation of higher education
Anna Robinson-Pant, University of East Anglia
Presentation for SRHE seminar, April 29th. 2015
[email protected]
Towards a transformative
approach

‘Transformative internationalization is as much about
values of international reciprocity within the
institutional ethical and belief system as it is about
skilful teaching and learning practices, requiring
individuals to move from an ethnocentric to an
ethnorelative position.’ (Turner & Robson 2008:126)

‘Despite paying lip service to various aspects of
internationalisation, institutions are failing to make
the most of the opportunity to engage in a radical
reassessment of HE purposes, priorities and processes
that student diversity and multicultural interaction
provide.’ (De Vita and Case 2003: 238)

‘As with most educational transformations,
internationalisation has been largely atheoretical and
driven through practice.’ (Maringe, Foskett and
Woodfield, 2013: 10)
Internationalisation: the
economic rationale
‘Internationalisation has grown alongside the
marketisation of education’ (Maringe, Foskett and
Woodfield 2013: 18)
 Models of internationalisation: commercial-value
driven, cultural-value driven, curriculum-value
driven (ibid)
 Internationalisation of the curriculum: ‘the
incorporation of an international and intercultural
dimension into the content of curriculum as well as
the teaching and learning arrangements and support
services of a program of study’ (Leaske 2009: 209)

Internationalisation: the
research perspective

‘The dominant discourse appears to centre on what
universities do to fit international students into their
existing cultures…’ (Turner & Robson 2008: 70)

‘While globalisation tends to focus on the creation of
universal models in various spheres of life, which promote
greater integration and interdependence between nations,
internationalisation seeks to promote the greater
exploitation of knowledge through multi-perspectives and
multi-models created through exchange and increased
communication between nations and different cultures’
(Meringe et al, 2013: 13)

‘The interplay of intercultural communication on the ground
of contemporary western institutions is also a dynamic
source of change and differentiation in the languaging
practices of higher education’ (Turner 2011: 11)
Recruitment agents and
internationalisation

International recruitment agents: what thoughts do
you have about them? Any questions/issues about
agents that arise from your experiences in HE?
Choose the colour of post-it note that fits most closely
with your role in relation to higher education:
Pink = teacher
Green = administrative/policy
Yellow = student
Beyond a marketing perspective
on recruitment agents

Consumer behaviour and student decision making (Pimpa
2003)

Agency theory: Typology of HEI approaches towards agencies
as strategic investor, market trader, flexible friends, mutual
enterprise and tough banker (Huang, Raimo and Humfrey,
2014:13)

Migration/mobility studies: agents can ‘be viewed as the
connection between increasingly formalised regulatory
systems, market dynamics of migration and the social lives
of international migrants’ (Collins 2012: 137)

‘a clash of two different economies, one guiding the
production of the documents and the other guiding their
uptake’ (Research on Burundese asylum seeker documents
in Belgium, Blommaert 2004: 660)
Agents as educators too?
‘The norm now is that agents apply on behalf of the student – the student
just gives the agent all the information and they also receive the
emails and forward them to the students – mostly they are very good
at this and translate the university’s messages to the student
because the messages can confuse the student, especially if they are
international’ (Interview with HEI international officer).
‘The kids these days are too much dependent on us. Sometimes they
don’t even read the emails from the university and expect the agent
to do everything. I tell them “you are going to study abroad, you
need to read all the information yourself”. It is totally different from
my time. I had to do things for myself, the counsellor did not help
that much.’ (Agent in Thailand)
‘Now applicants are faced with too much information and they need to
study it carefully.’ (Agent in Japan)
‘Many clients tend to shop agencies and submit more than 15
applications. I hope that I could educate my clients a healthy concept
about pursuing international higher education.’ (Agent in Taiwan)
International students in the
UK university
‘Some lecturers say at the beginning that they do not want to hear any
noise. But many students do not care about it or maybe they are
discussing about the lecture. Most of them have just finished
undergraduate courses in China. It is very strict there and they don’t
want to do that sort of course again, but they bring that behaviour
here. Because you can talk in lectures here, they think that they can
discuss in lectures all the time. They think it is OK because everyone
comes from China. I find this very disturbing but I don’t know how to
say anything to the lecturer about the talking. Sometimes I want to
get up and say something but I don’t want to fuel prejudice about
Chinese students.’ [from interview with Chinese student]
‘We choose our own group. I am not so happy with mine. All the group is
Chinese apart from me and they speak to each other in Chinese. In
my group only one person speaks English to me then translates into
Chinese for the others. It is not just that I don’t understand them,
but that when I speak to them in English there is a lot of
communication breakdown, my meaning gets lost. I see this because
when they write it down, it is not what I meant... I try to get them to
speak English but they seem timid in the group and don’t look at me.
Maybe the seminar teacher would help with this situation if I emailed
them but I did not think was important enough to do that.’
Beyond cultural dualisms: research
with international students
Extract from DVD ‘International students: reflections on
PhD supervision’, section on ‘Researching and
communicating across cultures, disciplines and
methodologies’ (Magyar and Robinson-Pant, 2010)

Whose knowledge? Whose authority?

Whose literature? Whose language?

What is ‘good’ academic writing - and reading?
Internationalisation as a lens on the marketised
university: possibilities and challenges
Exploring how cultures and identities are
constructed through our interactions and
changing practices in higher educational
institutions
 Moving from dualisms, identification of
‘differences’ to focus on how students and
teachers negotiate differing perspectives in
learning and teaching situations
 University managers/administrators and
academics responsible for teaching and
learning have different and sometimes
conflicting priorities, concerns, values and
knowledges. How can we begin to bridge this
widening gap?

References

Bartell, M. (2003) Internationalization of universities: a university culture-based framework, Higher Education 45, 43-70

Blommaert, J. (2004) Writing as a problem: African grassroots writing, economies of literacy, and globalization, Language in Society 33, 643-671

Brooks, R. and J. Waters (2011) Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Collins, F. (2012) Organizing student mobility: education agents and student migration to New Zealand, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 1, pp 135 - 158

De Vita, G. & P. Case (2003) Rethinking the Internationalisation Agenda in UK Higher Education, Journal of Further & Higher Education, Vol. 27/4, pp
383-398

Huang, I., Raimo, V. and C. Humfrey (2014) Power and Control: managing agents for international student recruitment in higher education, Studies in
Higher Education

Hulme, M., Thomson, A., Hulme, R. and Doughty, G. (2013) Trading Places: The role of agents in international student recruitment from Africa. Journal
of Further and Higher Education.

Knight, J. (2014) Three generations of crossborder Higher Education, in Streitwieser, B. (ed) Internationalisation of Higher Education and Global
Mobility, Oxford: Symposium Books

Leask, B. (2009) Using formal and informal curricula to improve interactions between home and international students, Journal of Studies in
International Education, 13(2) 205-221

Magyar, A. and Robinson-Pant, A. (2010) International research students: reflections on PhD supervision. DVD and manual produced for UEA Centre for
Staff Educational Development

Maringe, F., Foskett, N. and S. Woodfield (2013) Emerging internationalisation models in an uneven global terrain: findings from a global survey,
Compare, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp 9-36

Pimpa, B. (2003) The influence of peers and student recruitment agencies on Thai students’ choices of international education, Journal of Studies in
International Education Vol 7 (2) pp 178-192

Robinson-Pant, A. (2005) Cross-cultural Perspectives on Education, Buckingham: The Open University Press

The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (2014) The Agent Question: Insights from students, universities and agents, Sept. 2014

Turner, J. (2011) Language in the Academy: cultural reflexivity and intercultural dynamics, Bristol: Multilingual Matters

Turner, Y. and S. Robson (2008) Internationalizing the University, London: Continuum