Selling out the Public University? Administrative Sensemaking Strategies for Internationalization via Private Pathway Colleges in Canadian Higher Education

Abstract

The emergence of agreements between private pathway colleges and public English-medium institutions represents a new development in internationalization that further challenges the public higher education landscape. While these institutional arrangements are controversial and often criticized, university senior administrators have been successfully able to advocate for and authorize them. This paper takes a closer look into the reasoning that administrators use in order to legitimize formal agreements with private pathway colleges in Canada. Drawing from the sensemaking literature within organizational theory, the following strategies are traced and analyzed: 1) normalization, 2) authorization, 3) rationalization, 4) moralization, and 5) narrativization. Through content analysis of 50 institutional documents, supported by nine semi-structured interviews with senior administrators representing two public universities and one private provider in Canada (Navitas), the paper demonstrates how neoliberal ideologies in internationalization are actively enacted in public spaces by administrators representing the public higher education sector.