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Is higher education in really ‘internationalising’?

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Abstract

It is a widely accepted maxim that, like business generally, higher education is globalising. For many countries, higher education is now an important export sector, with university campuses attracting international students from around the world. Licensing production, in the form of franchising degree provision to international partners, is beginning to mutate into foreign direct investment as many universities set up campuses in other countries. While there are clearly parallels between the globalisation of business and higher education, this paper examines the supply- and demand-side drivers within the university sector. It argues that an alignment of special factors, rather than an inexorable trend towards commercialisation, has caused the recent internationalisation of higher education and concludes that current trends are unsustainable in the medium-term.

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Notes

  1. See Knight (2005) for a useful review of terms in international higher education and well as definitional difficulties with the concept of ‘international’ students.

  2. http://www.uopxonline.com/aboutus.asp

  3. http://www.open.ac.uk/about/ou/p3.shtml

  4. http://www.moe.edu.cn/english/laws_r.htm

  5. http://www.unswasia.edu.sg/about/about.html

  6. http://www.unswasia.edu.sg/about/about.html

  7. The business model for franchises often fails to fully cost the time of managers on the home campus who are charged with quality assurance or include a realistic premium for the risk faced by the home university; on this basis, the total costs of a franchise with the attendant principal agent problems can sometimes be much higher than the direct costs appear.

  8. http://www.yawningbread.org/apdx_2005/imp-226.htm

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  1. College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, 8020, New Zealand

    Nigel M. Healey

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  1. Nigel M. Healey
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Correspondence to Nigel M. Healey.

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Healey, N.M. Is higher education in really ‘internationalising’?. High Educ 55, 333–355 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-007-9058-4

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