Internationalizing higher education: a critical overview

Internationalization has become one of the central themes of higher education in recent years. This theme or agenda has many manifestations including: competing for a greater proportion of international staff and students, encouraging staff and student exchanges between institutions, internationalizing the curricula for home students, and fostering a greater degree of intercultural contact between students. Straddling these various initiatives are also two other major dimensions through which higher education now legitimates its purpose: the development of graduate attributes as well as global citizens. Some initiatives are primarily directed at institutional economic benefit or prestige in the pecking order employability, others at enhancing students' employability, and yet others focus more on citizenship and civic responsibility. These are not mutually exclusive although there has been a more recent concern with the development of the latter. This paper provides a critical overview of the internationalization agenda taking into account recent literature in the field and highlighting some problematic issues.