Undoing internationalisation is a problem, not a solution

Looking at the current debate taking place in high-income countries about higher education and its international dimensions, one wonders if 50 years of internationalisation in higher education have come to an end, with examples including discussions on caps on international student admissions, a sharpened focus on knowledge security and attacks on academics and institutions collaborating with certain countries.

Are we undoing internationalisation?

This question was the theme of a recent webinar in the “Reconciling marketisation: Understanding the new political economy of higher education” series organised by the Centre for Higher Education Studies at University College London and the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

The webinar, which I had the pleasure to present together with Jenna Mittelmeier, Malcolm Tight and Catherine Montgomery from the UK, took place on 27 November 2024.

It addressed an issue one can look at from different angles. Already in 2011, Uwe Brandenburg and I addressed it in our provocative essay “The end of internationalisation”, and again, earlier this year, with Paulina Latorre.

A lot has happened over the past 50 years, and in the current complex global environment it is important to look both back and forwards at the evolution of internationalisation of higher education for possible signs of its decline and transformation.

From optimism to neoliberalism

In the late 1980s, internationalisation moved from being a marginal, ad hoc and fragmented list of activities to becoming a more integrated and strategic part of the higher education agenda in high-income countries.

It was a period of hope and optimism, in which collaboration, exchange and solidarity prevailed, although marketisation and competition were already present in key Anglophone countries, such as Australia and the United Kingdom.

The fall of the Iron Curtain, the European programmes for education and research and the need for knowledge creation and collaboration as part of the globalisation process inspired institutions of higher education in their efforts to become more international.

However, around the turn of the century, a shift took place away from these traditional collaborative values towards more competitive and market-oriented approaches. Neoliberalism became the driving rationale for internationalisation in the Global North, with mid- and low-income countries in the Global South being primary targets.

There certainly were counter-reactions, such as the ‘internationalisation at home’ movement in Europe, the call for ‘internationalisation of the curriculum’ in Australia and the UK, the appeal for a more ‘comprehensive internationalisation’ in the United States and the urge to decolonise higher education and its internationalisation in the Global South.

But the impact of these initiatives was – and still is – rather marginal; they are more rhetoric than reality. Rankings, government policies and revenue generation, intensifying marketisation and competition, have become drivers of internationalisation.

The COVID-19 pandemic did not provide any respite from these developments. When it subsided, education in the Global North returned to ‘normal’ as soon as possible.

In the Global South, one could see two approaches to internationalisation: on the one hand, a development of their own vision of internationalisation with an emphasis on regional collaboration, a decolonised curriculum and digitalisation (Collaborative Online International Learning and Virtual Exchange) at the institutional level, and policies focused on student recruitment, soft power development and transnational education at the national level.

Internationalisation dismantled

Currently, geopolitical tensions and conflicts, anti-immigration and anti-Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) sentiments and policies and nationalism appear to challenge the return to the ‘old normal’ of neoliberal internationalisation.

There are all kinds of signals that high-income countries are now turning away from competition and marketisation: curbing or freezing the admission of international students, emphasising knowledge security and putting an end to research collaboration and exchanges with countries like China, Iran, Russia and others.

This undoing of internationalisation is becoming even more critical. Election results in the United States, as well as in several European countries, signal a dismantling of internationalisation in these countries.

Clear examples are the actions by governments in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to reduce the number of international students as well as the policies of the European Union and of several national governments when it comes to strengthening knowledge security or what is referred to as ‘responsible internationalisation’ (in which ‘responsible’ no longer means ‘responsible for the global society’ – the SDGs – but ‘responsible for our security’).

A radical undoing

This ‘undoing’ of internationalisation as a synonym for neoliberalism does not mean a return to the traditional values of cooperation, exchange and solidarity, as Uwe Brandenburg and I called for in 2011. It is a move towards a radical undoing of all internationalisation of higher education.

This is remarkable, as it goes hand in hand with budget cuts in higher education and research and shortages in the skilled labour market and, as such, is counterproductive.

Although one can question the intentions of several governments in the Global South, the opposite seems to be happening there, with the development of internationalisation concepts and policies that are no longer dependent on the Global North, but are competing with it.

Current developments give the higher education community an opportunity and a requirement to reassess and reimagine internationalisation as being composed of socially responsible and inclusive actions, both in the Global North and the Global South. Undoing is not the solution but the problem.

Hans de Wit is professor emeritus and distinguished fellow, Boston College Center for International Higher Education, United States, and senior fellow of the International Association of Universities (IAU). E-mail: [email protected].

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.