Internationalisation of Education - Essay Example

Internationalisation of Education Introduction Knowledge, as on date, can be equated with being an essential commodity that sans borders. In a globalized world as this, it travels great distances between countries. While on the one hand it has given tremendous impetus to the knowledge-based economy in terms of its growth, on the other it also is leaving a trail of positive and negative benefits to both the host countries to which students move and parent countries from which they start their mobility. The competition and pressures that the student mobility from one country to another has created gets its ripples felt in almost all sectors; primarily including the job market, employer to employer competition and even competition among institutions to retain or train the best brains. Even though globalization has made student mobility a lot easier on account of governments’ specific cross-cultural initiative in this regard, the migration of students between different countries for higher education has been prevalent there since decades. Since the numbers of student mobility are increasing every year; it has been observed that as the demand for higher education grows rapidly and beyond some countries capacity, it is actually becoming difficult for them now to meet it domestically. The traditional model for students has been to travel from their own country to another for higher education or for completing part of their education overseas. Universities, over the years, have been looking forward to receiving overseas students on account of their smart and hardworking nature (Harison, L., Cushen, C., Hutchison, S, 2006). This model has been encouraged has been both economically and socially by both the two countries involved, apart from students’ personal eagerness to travel overseas. (Clark and Sedgwick, 2005). Countries which welcome overseas students do so for a variety of reasons; mostly derivatives of their willingness to harness advantages foreign students to their shores. For example, Europe and North America have been welcoming foreign students on account of the diversity and cross-cultural values they bring along with. These nations also find foreign students as substitutes for their domestic students and thus help stabilize their revenues and student bodies. What worries these nations is their declining tertiary school-age population for which foreign students become a befitting substitute. The advantage seen here by the host countries is that their universities are able to stabilize their admissions. With an eye on the advantages of improving relationships with other countries, some governments even provide enough of financial support to foreign students, including scholarships. Clearly they see these incentives merely a part of their attempts to enhance their international status with other countries. On the other hand the foreign students pass on an economic advantage to the people in which their institutions or they themselves are located. This is through the money they spend on themselves there, which, actually, goes up in building and strengthening the local business class. In other words the host countries have long viewed the training and intake of foreign students as a means of developing their own selves. In the recent years there has been a spurt in awareness on how cross-border higher education can create newer opportunities, particularly in terms of the expansion seen on human capital pool. Higher education is considered to be the most predominant and widely exposed sector of knowledge preservation, generation, and dissemination (Barbara, M. K., Ulrich, T., 2007). In what could be seen as seemingly smaller opportunities by the developed nations, the same might actually be larger than that for developing nations falling with the middle or low-income bracket. The income thus generated could give a boost to their social and economic development (Knight, 1999; Ninnes and Hellsten, 2005). Countries that have skilled manpower and resources to handle the influx have to benefit more as against those which don’t have it. Countries with similar financial strength and academic influence tend to gain more by the cross-border student mobility in terms of the exchange of knowledge that they carry, transmit or share on several platforms for enhancing their academic excellence further. Through this pursuit both the sender and the host countries have to gain. In the recent times a shift has been observed in the way student mobility has been going on. Previously the destinations as United States and Europe were the most favoured campuses for sending students overseas; and the sender, usually, were the developing nations. But over the last few years even these nations have realized the advantages and benefits of receiving overseas students rather than only sending them. The boost it gives to the economy of the host nation has triggered a wave of collaborations in these nations to the extent that these nations have separate wings in their education ministries working towards developing cross-border higher education initiatives and even setting up of local branch campuses for reputed overseas universities. Examples include South Africa, Malaysia, Qatar, Dubai, and Singapore – these countries have set up branch campuses of overseas universities, and following in their footsteps are other middle-income nations too. The focus is on certain targeted study programs the long-term goals of which are furthering their exiting academic base while eyeing future prospects in these fields. When the expertise comes in from a foreign university practically at doorsteps, the host countries have to spend less on students travelling to these countries since the same knowledge is available back home in the neighborhood. The other side of the coin is to offer the advantage of a foreign university program to low income students capable of being candidates for foreign universities but can’t afford doing so. Sender countries have their own reasons to get their students into foreign universities; one of them is an idea to broaden their tertiary capacities. The preferred destinations normally are Europe and North America and preferred fields of study are science and technology. The objective is clear that once these students return highly qualified and experienced, they can act as backbones for the research and teaching activities in their parent country. These countries also see these students as ambassadors of their culture to the host countries, and on return expect them to bring in plethora of knowledge and experiences in order to enrich the home country. Since globalization is considered to have brought the world together, the internalization of education is seen democratization it. It offers the advantage of looking at the world as a whole rather than demographies divided by borders. This is helping the student community to make better and wiser judgments, which have a positive impact on the whole society as against a section of it. Countries, through these students, get a deeper insight into the polity of other nations (Jarvis, P. 2000). Clearly, advantages of internationalisation of education outweigh disadvantages. But one thing that has been of considerable concern for the sender countries is the brain drain, even though it might eventually mean brain gain for the host countries. The issue has been widely debated recently particularly in the World Bank publications (Ozden and Schiff 2006). Rather than looking at this phenomenon from a negative point-of-view, the World Bank prefers to term it as “brain circulation” (Docquier and Marfouk 2006). This occurs when tertiary students give up the idea of returning. Once a country is in this type of a situation, it actually loses higher education population significantly, which has negative impact on the home country’s economy. There is not any set pattern on the brain drain since not much data has been collected on this so far, but all countries suffer from this problem; the degree of which can be dependent on how good the home countries are in retention power. The brain drain has been observed to happen more in case of poor countries when their students travel to the richer ones and never return. The implications are for both the sending and as well as the receiving countries and factors responsible are purely economical in nature – willingness of a student of today for finding a better prospect for tomorrow. This has led countries short of highly skilled labour and most of these countries are relaxing visa rules for overseas people to work in their nation. Even though it tends to give birth to an open-border work culture, economic implications of such arrangements often come at a dearer price to the developing nations. Since every country seem to be indulging in this sort of a game what results is a neck throat competition amongst each other. The irony tend to manifest itself when a domestic student is employed by a foreign nation at higher perks, the host country has to, again, hire an overseas person for even higher pay. Conclusion Internationalisation of education refers to worldwide interdependence and interconnectedness of institutions. Technically Internationalisation of education is nothing but an effect of globalization. Due to the latter knowledge has learnt to travel great distances through its messengers called students. While these students travel from their home country to the host country as small ambassadors, their voyages are often seen as attempts of amalgamating several cultures together. In the process they leave many imprints on the host nations and a number of expectations back home. Internationalisation of education, thus, leaves both positive and negative impacts on countries that become part of this arrangement. The host countries have to gain economically, and in certain cases, socially from this mobility and the home countries on the experience and skill of these students once they return. Negative outcome, however, can be if the students decide to stay back in the host country and become a part of its development. References Barbara, M. Kehm., Ulrich, Teichler. (2007). Research on Internationalisation in Higher Education, Journal of Studies in International Education 2007 11: 260 Clark, Nick, and Robert Sedgwick. (2005). "International Students: It's a Buyer's Market." World Education News and Reviews, August 2005. Docquier, Frederic, and Abdeslam Marfouk. (2006). "International Migration by Education Attainment, 1990-2000." Pp. 151-199 in International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain, edited by Caglar Ozden, and Maurice Schiff. Washington: The World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan. Harison, L., Cushen, C., Hutchison, S. (2006). Achieve IELTS 2, Malaysia: Marshall Cavendish Inc Jarvis, Peter. (2000). "Globalisation, the Learning Society and Comparative Education." Comparative Education 36:343–355. Knight, Jane. (1999). "Internationalisation of Higher Education." Pp. 13-18 in Quality and Internationalisation in Higher Education, edited by OECD. Paris: OECD. Ninnes, Peter, and Meeri Hellsten (eds.). (2005). Internationalizing Higher Education: Critical Explorations of Pedagogy and Policy. Paris: OECD. Ozden, Caglar, and Maurice Schiff (eds.). (2006). International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain, 1st ed. Washington: The World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan. Read More