Implications for equity and diversity of increasing international student numbers in European universities: Policies and practice in four national contexts

Abstract

This paper examines the main rationales for and possible implications of the policy of increasing international student numbers in higher education (HE). Drawing on critical discourse analysis, we map key themes emerging from two sets of data-university strategy documents and interviews with staff-collected at eight universities in four national contexts in Europe as a part of a larger project focused on ethical internationalism in HE. In our analysis of the data, we apply social cartographic mapping to consider overlapping, competing and absent discourses related to the push to increase international student numbers by using a heuristic developed in the larger project. We found the imperative to increase international student numbers to be largely driven by economic rationales across different national contexts, reflective of a corporatization trend. Where more civic rationales are presented, these discourses are ultimately framed and mediated by neoliberalism. The findings contribute insight into the complicated discursive terrain of internationalising HE. The mapping makes visible what can be taken for granted or is left unexamined. It serves as a jumping-off point for reflection on the policy, practice and research of internationalisation in HE, promoting the formulation of key questions around the assumed benefits and ethics of internationalisation.

A meta-review of typologies of global citizenship education

“…The heuristic helps make intelligible some of the overlaps, conflations, contradictions and tensions within and between 'types' of GCE (the groupings of frameworks and approaches described in different typologies) by looking at key discursive orientations and their interfaces. The original heuristic was developed in the Ethical Internationalisation in Higher Education (EIHE) project (see Figure 1) to map discourses evident in higher education policies related to topics such as international development (Pashby and Andreotti 2016) and increasing international students (Haapakoski and Pashby 2017).…”

Study abroad as governmentality: the construction of hypermobile subjectivities in higher education

“…Outward student mobility is another dimension of higher education that may be analysed from this perspective. It is understood that a neoliberal narrative focussed on the figure of the 'entrepreneurial student' dominates student mobility policies and that it has replaced the 'European citizenship' discourse that underpinned the Erasmus exchange programme as it was originally shaped (Haapakoski and Pashby 2017). Despite this acknowledgement, literature on student mobility tends to take the standpoint of self-formation or strategies of social reproduction (e.g.…”

Moving from interdisciplinary research to transdisciplinary educational ethics: Bridging epistemological differences in researching higher education internationalization(s)

“…The emphasis is not on discussing the empirical findings of the EIHE project that have been discussed elsewhere already (see e.g. Pashby and Andreotti, 2017, Haapakoski and Pashby, 2017, Suša, 2016). The EIHE project is an example of an interdisciplinary mixed-methods project, joining 23 partner universities from nine countries in a collaborative effort to examine and discuss the contemporary challenges in and potential alternatives for internationalization of HE.…”