Higher education has now become a real part of the globalization process: the cross-border matching of supply and demand. Consequently, higher education can no longer be viewed in a strictly national context. This calls for a broader definition of internationalization, which embraces the entire functioning of higher education and not merely a dimension or aspect of it, or the actions of some individuals who are part of it. This article provides a conceptual and organizational framework of internationalization of higher education, which includes a discussion on the meaning and definition of the term, a description of the various rationales for and approaches to internationalization, and an analysis of strategies of integrating international dimensions in a higher education institution.

This paper analyzes how China has managed to embrace mass higher education in a short timeline, and examines how far this move has followed the existing or established patterns elsewhere through comparing its core aspects with those of four identifiable models of mass higher education: the American model, the Western European model, the Latin American model and the East Asian model. While acknowledging that the current structure of the Chinese higher education system appears to resemble the American in many ways, this paper concludes that it is fundamentally different from the American model, as well as from the Western European and the Latin American models. Largely mirroring the East Asian model, the Chinese approach features a strong sense of 'state instrumentism' and is also characterized by integral tensions among its various sectors, which could turn into either positive dynamics for vibrant growth or negative forces leading to serious social justice and equity issues. After enjoying an unprecedented expansion between 1999 and 2006, Chinese higher education has come to a historical juncture to reconsider its success in the light of more collaborative and normative ideologies, such as those grounded in social justice and human potential.

This article proposes a new typology of “inward- and outward-oriented” higher education (HE) internationalization based on the spread of innovations that involve knowledge, culture, HE models, and norms. It reviews existing typologies related to HE internationalization; discusses theories of world system, soft power, and knowledge diplomacy; and utilizes the notion of transcultural diffusion of innovations. As a supplement to existing theories, this new typology is constructed primarily for capturing the currents and dynamics of HE internationalization as they relate to the spread of innovations to analyze newly emerging scenarios. The article applies this new typology to a discussion of real-world cases and tests its viability.

The expansion and diversification of higher education are twin phenomena that have been associated with the development of higher education in many countries around the world. This study attempts to use enrolment expansion as a lens to examine the effects of governmental intervention and market forces on diversification of the Chinese system, which has gone through the most profound changes of institutional patterns and the largest expansion ever seen in the world higher education community. Forming an analytical framework from the population ecology perspective, the resource dependency perspective and the institutional isomorphism perspective, this study investigates programmatic as well as institutional diversification of a population of 594 Chinese universities at the end of 2001. A result of these changes is the impulse towards more comprehensive patterns of knowledge, with the universities seeking to broaden their curricular coverage. Paralleling this pattern of programmatic convergence, Chinese universities are being structured in a hierarchical way according to functions and goals.