Tag Archives: government

March 12, 2013, 10:23 am

Why Higher-Education Accreditors Need International Offices

How to make sure that educational programs that originate in one country but are delivered in another are of high quality?

The University of Nottingham, in Britain, operates a campus in Malaysia.

Up to now, accreditors and other quality-assurance agencies have attempted to adapt existing procedures to these international engagements—essentially trying to shoehorn them into a model that isn’t a good fit.

For the most part, quality assurance has been domestically focused: designed to review domestic programs that serve a mostly domestic audience. It is inherently built on widely accepted cultural norms of the country. For example, in the United States, the accreditation process is widely based on the idea of shared governance, in which faculty are fully engaged in the institutional review process. But not …

July 16, 2012, 1:40 pm

Is Comprehensive Internationalization Comprehensive Enough?

By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser

Comprehensive internationalization seems to be all the rage these days. For the past decade, the concept has been the topic of policy reports, institutional planning documents, and meetings around the world. More than mere internationalization, comprehensive internationalization emphasizes activities that touch on all aspects of the institution, suggesting deep and ubiquitous change from the status quo. Advocates rightly argue that institutions need to be more strategic and inclusive with their international activities. However, the focus on institutional activities alone can often lead us to forget that internationalization should also be a national policy concern.

For example, the Partnership for a New American Economy released this month a report that argued existing immigration policies in the United States are a significant deterrent to the health of the nation’s innovation…

June 11, 2012, 8:55 am

The Bear Begins to Wake: Russia Internationalizes

By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser

When it comes to the internationalization of higher education, the Russian Bear has remained in hibernation. On the global stage, Russia has not been widely viewed as a major international player in the area of higher education, nor has it made any splashy announcements about new government policies or institutional activities. Such a situation is surprising when one considers the amount of internationalizing activity engaged in by the other emerging economies of the BRIC group. Brazil recently launched its Science without Borders program to send 100,000 students abroad in three years. India and China are often discussed as the top senders of students studying abroad in the world. All three have been very public in discussing their desires to internationalize their higher education sectors, including wanting to make their own higher education institutions more internationally competitive…

April 19, 2012, 3:16 pm

What Is the Role for Governments in Global Higher Education?

By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser

Last fall, the Canadian government announced the creation of a new advisory panel to identify ways to tie international education to the nation’s economic and trade policy. In Brazil, the government is providing 75,000 scholarships for students to study overseas in the next four years. Qatar has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on importing branch campuses from the United States and other western nations.

With all of this in mind, last week SUNY and OECD co-hosted a conference in New York City entitled “Internationalization for Job Creation and Economic Growth: Increasing Coherence of Government and System Policies at a Time of Global Crisis.” With more than 100 people from 17 nations in attendance, there were a variety of perspectives on this issue, but one common theme emerged: the economic impact of higher education’s international activities is attracting significant …