Abstract
Australian higher education institutions are becoming increasingly globalized, in that they are becoming more and more entangled in the processes of global exchanges of capital, knowledge, and cultural practices. Large metropolitan universities with long standing international ties are expanding and enhancing their global positions, while newer universities in metropolitan and rural areas are moving into a range of international projects such as off-shore programs, development consultancies, twinning arrangements and the like. One major recent internationalization initiative in which Australian higher education institutions have been invited to participate is the Virtual Colombo Plan (VCP). Fostered by the Australian Government’s aid organization AusAID, in collaboration with the World Bank, the VCP purports to link Australian higher education institutions and technology companies with ‘developing’ countries so that the latter can overcome poverty by accessing knowledge through information communication technologies. In this chapter I analyse the major official documents describing the VCP, especially in terms of the models of ‘third world’ development they employ. Development is not an unproblematic concept; it has come under sustained attack in various quarters for a wide range of reasons (see, for example, Rist 1997, Carmen 1996, Escobar 1995, Dichter 2003). It is important, therefore, for Australian higher education institutions to engage in a critical reading of the VCP by examining the VCP proposals, and the merits and potential problems of the way the VCP depicts ‘developing’ countries, higher education, teaching and learning, and Australia’s relations with its neighbours. Such an analysis is also salutary for higher education institutions in other countries that are seeking to expand their offerings and activities beyond their own shores, because it brings to the surface a number of assumptions of
Published Version
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