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Measuring University Internationalization

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Book cover Measuring University Internationalization

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education ((PSGHE))

Abstract

Developing measurements for university internationalization is a challenging task. Fortunately, predecessors’ endeavors simplified this task significantly. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the existing tools used to assess university internationalization performance, and shows these tools’ similarities and differences in the focused national context, their purpose, unit of measurement, and methods of data collection. Further, Yuan identifies the common dimensions and components of university internationalization the existing instruments capture and summarizes all indicators available currently. By doing so, the existing indicators’ advantages and shortcomings as preferred performance measurements are presented vividly. This chapter lays the foundation for developing the new indicator set in this project.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Mestenhauser (2002) uses a system perspective to portray several key learning domains of international education and ‘perspectives’ through which the domains can be examined. The learning domains are composed of international studies and relations; area studies; foreign languages; international dimensions of academic disciplines; educational exchanges; development contracts and interuniversity agreements; and organizations, administration, policy, governance, and financing. By combining these learning domains and variables relevant to research universities, Horn et al. (2007) result with five rubrics: student characteristics, scholar characteristics, the international research orientation, curriculum content, and organizational support.

  2. 2.

    Since the mid-1980s, educational indicators have been a priority on education and policy agenda. Considerable theoretical work and empirical studies have been done in efforts to develop reliable and useful educational indicators at state, national, and international levels (Ogawa & Collom, 1998; Tuijnman & Bottani, 1994; Wyatt, 1994). International interest in educational indicators has been driven by the concerns on expanding the enrollment capacity of education system while simultaneously improving the quality of education. Policymakers realized that these goals set high demands on policy analysis and, accordingly, that the comparative knowledge base in education was in need of improvement (Tuijnman & Bottani, 1994). In this circumstance, various educational indicators were developed to serve measurement and evaluation purposes.

  3. 3.

    The policy-relevant purposes that indicators serve imply that the selection of a set of indicators should base on an understanding of which components of the system are critical to its health and which features signal important changes in its condition (Dickson & Lim, 1991; Gaither, 1994; Oakes, 1986).

  4. 4.

    It is interesting to notice that even in the initial phase of educational indicators development, efforts (e.g., OECD, 1992) were made to establish a cross-national system for comparisons.

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  1. Centre for International Research on Education, Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Catherine Yuan Gao

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Gao, C.Y. (2019). Measuring University Internationalization. In: Measuring University Internationalization. Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21465-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21465-4_3

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