Higher Education Mobility Research Articles

Academic Inbreeding and Mobility in Higher Education: Global Perspectives edited by Maria Yudkevich, Philip Altbach, and Laura Rumbley. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 280 pp. $100.00 (cloth). ISBN: 9781137461247.

<i>Academic Inbreeding and Mobility in Higher Education: Global Perspectives</i> edited by Maria Yudkevich, Philip Altbach, and Laura Rumbley. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 280 pp. $100.00 (cloth). ISBN: 9781137461247.

Book Review of "Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education"

Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2011). Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Pages: 208. Price: 100.00 USD (hardcover). ISBN 9780230578449Current research investigating international student mobility tends to focus on economic factors and government policies. Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education departs from this trend by looking at internationalization of higher education from students' perspectives. Drawing on case studies of international student mobility from East Asia, mainland Europe, and the UK, the authors have developed a strong analysis on the relationship between the internationalization of higher education and the understanding of student mobility. Informed by key conceptual ideas and discourses associated with employability, cultural capital, social reproduction, and cosmopolitan identities, this book is a timely investigation of the changing patterns of international student mobility. With the majority of educational research examining student flow from countries in East and Southeast Asia to Anglophone destinations, the authors take a unique position by considering the perspectives of students who come from continental Europe and the UK.According to the authors student mobility is changing direction, from inward migration to outward migration for some Anglophone countries. They also point out that countries such as China and India, which used to be main senders of students, are now attracting students from overseas. The analysis of the changing nature of student mobility is developed through eight chapters.The introductory chapter highlights relevant literature and explores the link between neoliberalism, globalization, and education. The authors survey literature around highly contested concepts such as neoliberalism and globalization, and suggest that these two terms should be problematized and kept analytically distinct. By clarifying the distinctions between empirical facts, ideology, and the social-imaginary natures of globalization, this chapter also briefly introduces some key conceptual ideas that are explored in more depth in the later chapters.Chapter 2 addresses the policy context of contemporary student mobility in higher education at the international, regional, national, and local levels. While many researchers and scholars argue that globalizing pressures and the influence of transnational organizations have fundamentally changed educational policy and practice, the authors contend that individual nations still retain considerable decision-making powers.Chapters 3 through 5 provide strong empirical evidence on the student experiences from East Asia, mainland Europe, and the UK. Although examining a similar group of young students seeking higher education in an overseas environment, these chapters point to a very different picture for each individual region. The authors maintain that students from East Asian countries such as China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan are motivated by the potential to accumulate social and cultural capital. On the other hand, students from mainland Europe are motivated by broader economic and political considerations, such as instilling a particular type of European identity. While suggesting that the motivations for students from the UK who study abroad are less clear, the authors do illustrate the privileged nature of the experience of UK students seeking overseas higher education.Chapters 6 and 7 highlight key themes emerging from the analysis of the preceding case studies. In Chapter 6 the authors explore the emergent geographies of student mobility and introduce a distinctive geographical perspective into their analysis of it. In Chapter 7 they reflect on the changing nature of higher education within the context of internationalization. Drawing on the earlier case studies, this chapter explores the internationalization of higher education by looking at different aspects of societal change. …

Personalising professional learning mobility in Higher Education

Personalising professional learning mobility in Higher Education

“Why don't you think of Malaysia?” - Narratives on Educational Migration, Emotions, and Social Capital among Transnational Students

AbstractThis contribution is about a female transnational student from Turkey, Hafize, studying for four years at an Islamic Malaysian university. She was interviewed during the research project “Transnational Student Mobility in Higher Education in Asia”, a multi-sited ethnographic project containing six sub-studies aiming to illuminate student voices and the impact of cultural processes on student-inhabited transnational spaces, identity negotiations, and networks. Through a bottom-up perspective, and with life story as the principal method, the project illustrates processes of social change and relations between the individual and society. Questions are posed about,inter alia, the motivations and reasons that may be identified in the educational stories. Hafize's narrative is discussed as a relational and contextual story, in which family relations and the significance of education, gender, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic and political situations intersect. Education is given different meanings: instrumental and reflexive as well as emotional aspects. Turning points and the concept of capital, especially social and emotional capital, are addressed. Hafize's family of eight siblings is deeply involved in serial reciprocity, a tightly bonded network supporting all the children in their efforts to study. Hafize's story is substantially gendered and ‘ethnified’ – a reflexive emotional identity project, in which education and religion are given high priority. In Turkey secularist legislation was an obstacle. The studies abroad provided possibilities for self-development but tempered with some limitations.

Social network analysis on the international student mobility in higher education and the centrality of Korea: Policy implications for the internationalization of higher education in Korea

Social network analysis on the international student mobility in higher education and the centrality of Korea: Policy implications for the internationalization of higher education in Korea

Academic inbreeding: local challenge, global problem

Why examine “academic inbreeding,” a seemingly small and peripheral aspect of the academic profession, involving the appointment of faculty members who graduated from the institution employing them? Academic Inbreeding and Mobility in Higher Education: Global Perspectives had its origins in a concern at the National Research University — Higher School of Economics in Moscow that the common practice in Russia of hiring one’s own graduates for faculty jobs has profound implications for academic culture, productivity, and the essential nature of the university. This interest led to a research project collaboratively organized by the Higher School of Economics and the Boston College Center for International Higher Education and centered on an examination of academic inbreeding in eight different countries: Argentina, China, Japan, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, and Ukraine. We quickly discovered that faculty inbreeding is common worldwide — and not just a concern in Russia. Indeed, hiring one’s own graduates is not considered either unusual or problematic in many countries. The pattern has been in place for many years — often for centuries — and is quite often considered a point of pride for a higher education system, as clear evidence that the system is able to retain its best intellectual talent.

International staff mobility in higher education: To what extent could an intra-European entrepreneurial approach be applied to Sino-CEE initiatives? *

The promotion of international staff mobility is a founding principle of the ‘Bologna Process’, designed to create a converged system of higher education across Europe, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and in which CEE countries are implicated. Meanwhile, the Chinese government encourages Chinese universities to internationalise and exchange staff, while focussing on Central and Eastern Europe to develop relationships in the EU. A unique, two-phase research methodology was devised to investigate the effects of culture on implementing staff mobility through strategic entrepreneurship and the feasibility of the transfer of such an approach from intra-EHEA mobility to Sino-EHEA mobility. A first-, second and third-person Insider Action Research (AR) approach was used to organise and implement an international staff exchange between universities within the EHEA. Data generated were subjected to a double process of analysis, including a meta-cycle of enquiry. This was followed by a series of in-depth interviews with Chinese academics on exchange in Europe. Data collected were subjected to thematic analysis and then triangulated with the Phase One data. Results showed the importance of individuals in the implementation of strategy. There were marked similarities in the importance of an ‘eco-system of collective interest’, often provided by the exchanger’s family, and in institutional attitudes to supporting these networks. Differences in entrepreneurial intensity between institutions as a result of organisational and national cultures affected the behaviour of individuals and this determines the strategy used to implement the exchange. Evidence of the paradoxical behaviour pattern in China and the significant cultural differences within the EHEA is presented as a starting point for Sino-CEE mobility strategy development: an entrepreneurial intra-EHEA strategy cannot simply be transferred to a Sino-EHEA context.

National Policies on Mobility in Europe

European countries have different approaches to student mobility in higher education. This article discusses policy variations, differences in mobility patterns, and related issues.

Current Trends, Challenges and Prospects of Student Mobility in the African Higher Education Landscape

Since the 1990s, the development in the international dimension of higher education including student/scholar mobility, regional and international research networks and initiatives have brought new opportunities for African higher education to be incorporated in the global knowledge production and circulation processes. One of the instruments of internationalization process that facilitates international knowledge flows in the knowledge society is academic mobility. This research will touch upon the major issues related to student mobility in Africa since the 1990s addressing pressing issues like; what is the current trend of both intra and inter African student and staff mobility in higher education in the region? How do the continental initiatives already in place to promote student and academic mobility work? What are the challenges and prospects of academic mobility in Africa? Recent developments in the area have also been described through quantitative and qualitative data generated from primary and secondary sources.

The Essential, Objective and Functional Characteristics of the Students’ Academic Mobility in Higher Education

The globalization of education triggers fair criticism of the university self-sufficiency in any country to train competent professionals, moreover, today the necessity to expand the students’ academic mobility is universally recognized. The article describes the basic methodological approaches to defining the essence of the concept of “academic mobility”. It explores the goal, objectives, functions of the students’ academic mobility in the context of international educational integration. This publication submits a classification of the forms of academic mobility of the higher education students on the following grounds: on the type of educational process, on the period of study in a foreign educational establishment, on the nature of the students’ involvement. The article can be useful to the academic staff of higher educational institutions, to the staff of the university centers of academic mobility as well as the employees of the university international departments in the development of international cooperation and academic mobility of the students.

International staff mobility in higher education: To what extent could an intra-European entrepreneurial approach be applied to Sino-CEE initiatives?

The promotion of international staff mobility is a founding principle of the ‘Bologna Process’, designed to create a converged system of higher education across Europe, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and in which CEE countries are implicated. Meanwhile, the Chinese government encourages Chinese universities to internationalise and exchange staff, while focussing on Central and Eastern Europe to develop relationships in the EU. A unique, two-phase research methodology was devised to investigate the effects of culture on implementing staff mobility through strategic entrepreneurship and the feasibility of the transfer of such an approach from intra-EHEA mobility to Sino-EHEA mobility. A first-, second and third-person Insider Action Research (AR) approach was used to organise and implement an international staff exchange between universities within the EHEA. Data generated were subjected to a double process of analysis, including a meta-cycle of enquiry. This was followed by a series of in-depth interviews with Chinese academics on exchange in Europe. Data collected were subjected to thematic analysis and then triangulated with the Phase One data. Results showed the importance of individuals in the implementation of strategy. There were marked similarities in the importance of an ‘eco-system of collective interest’, often provided by the exchanger’s family, and in institutional attitudes to supporting these networks. Differences in entrepreneurial intensity between institutions as a result of organisational and national cultures affected the behaviour of individuals and this determines the strategy used to implement the exchange. Evidence of the paradoxical behaviour pattern in China and the significant cultural differences within the EHEA is presented as a starting point for Sino-CEE mobility strategy development: an entrepreneurial intra-EHEA strategy cannot simply be transferred to a Sino-EHEA context.

International student mobility: the role of social networks

Building upon recent work on higher education mobility, this paper contends that social networks of friendship and kinship are critical determinants for students deciding to study overseas, not just, as has hitherto been suggested, a complementary factor. It uses original data collected through interviews and focus groups with thirty-eight higher education international students studying at three UK universities and argues that students who choose to study overseas do not operate within a vacuum but rather draw upon extended networks of individuals who have chosen to do so themselves or advocate studying abroad. While this encouragement may be of an explicit and unequivocal nature – telling students that they ought to study overseas – for the majority it is rather more implicit. The students interviewed invariably related that higher education overseas or mobility more generally was an accepted practice among their peers, thereby leading to a normalisation of the mobility process. The paper concludes that international students come to accept mobility as a taken for granted stage within the life course, and, whether intentionally or not, this is often the driving force behind their decision to study overseas.

Virtual Mobility in Higher Education. The UNED Campus Net Program

We present the UNED Virtual Mobility Campus Net Program, implemented since 2012 in collaboration with European and Latin American universities. Programs objectives, participating institutions, procedures, and evaluation are exposed. Virtual mobility is understood as a meaningful strategy for intercultural learning by studying an undergraduate or postgraduate degree program at the local, national or international level, in relation to the student's own studies, utilizing virtual or distance methodology; virtual mobility is also the possibility of studying specific topics or a determinate number of credits or courses. The equality of opportu - nity is a priority objective for UNED. The diversity of studentspersonal situations necessitates formulas that, along with traditional in-person mobility (e.g., Erasmus Program), utilize virtual resources to guarantee for all the students the intercultural experience of living in an academic environment different than ones own. We hope that the UNED Campus Net Program is of interest to readers and that we can incorporate new partners into the project over the next few years. The article deals with three main dimensions of the UNED Campus Net: objectives, implementation process and participantsevaluation. We aspire to discuss and improve this experience in cooperation with other institutions interested in implementing virtual mobility in higher education.

Equity and Professional Mobility in Higher Education and Some Questions Concerning the EHEA from the Catalan Experience

This article deals with the equal opportunities and professional mobility of Catalan university students in the first decade of the XXI century. The data presented demonstrate that there is a high level of equity and intergenerational professional mobility between graduates and their parents. Using these results, and the factors that have rendered them possible, the text raises questions about whether the progressive incorporation of Spanish universities into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) can result in a greater differentiation between universities, leading to a decrease in the equity of the university system and a more selective occupational mobility.

Exploring the diverse motivations of transnational higher education in China: complexities and contradictions

This article analyses the current situation of transnational higher education (TNE) in China by conducting a comprehensive documentary analysis. It first situates the phenomenon in global transnational mobility in higher education and then explores the diverse motivations of importing and exporting countries taking China and the UK as linked examples. The documentary analysis carried out for this research suggests that China has stated aims to promote TNE as a public good, whereas UK motivations for transnational education are ostensibly more driven by financial reasons. The article also identifies three features of the current situation in China: first showing that the distribution of the TNE in China is imbalanced; second, partner institutions are based in 21 economically developed countries or regions; third, the prominent cooperative arrangements are strongly focused in particular disciplines. The article argues that these features have led to unfair competition in some areas. Therefore, it appears that there are some inconsistencies and tensions between the stated aims of Chinese TNE policy and the way in which TNE is spreading and developing in practice.

The “Redirecting” of International Students: American Higher Education Policy Hindrances and Implications

International student mobility in higher education has gained currency as an important topic in today’s global, political, and economic environment. United States postsecondary institutions are working to expand their international student population to increase revenue and diversity. The current higher education and economic context has produced a “global war” to identify, recruit, and matriculate talented students who have become more mobile when selecting postsecondary education destinations. Thus, in order to provide a clear picture of the current status of international student migration to the United States, we sought to understand the following: 1)prestige as a determining factor in the selection of studying abroad for non-Americans living outside the United States; 2) federal and state financial influences that directly affect institutions’ abilities to enroll foreign students; 3) implications for postsecondary institutions in the United States; and 4) implications for scientific, cultural, and economic advancement for the United States.

Student Mobility and Migrant Knowledge

For a better understanding of the impact of global student flows on industries and knowledge societies, we need to rethink the relationship between global student mobility and migrant knowledge. The authors elaborate on the view that current policy and practice relating to higher education mobility puts too much emphasis on mobilizing pools of knowledge, thereby ignoring the fact that knowledge flows tend to be concentrated among people who are actively participating in the knowledge flow. Adopting a shared social context perspective on the dynamics of knowledge flow embedded in mobile minds may enable a better assessment to be made of the impact of student mobility over time on industries and societies. Given such an assessment, policy and practice measures can be developed to encourage those involved in the knowledge flow to exploit student talent flow more effectively.

Being mobile virtually

The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of virtual mobility, various types of virtual activities and the results of own research conducted within the MoreVM project. The new types of mobility, resp. virtual mobility are explored in EU context interpreting the research results and stressing case studies as examples of good practice. Virtual mobility among two or more educational institutions offers students a virtual trip abroad. There is an opportunity to acquire a number of ECTS-points at one of the foreign partner institutions or through a joint activity which are counted to the student’s degree at his/her home university. This paper is based on the research conducted among ERASMUS coordinators within the EU. The research was part of the MoreVM project which aims at facilitating the virtual mobility, encouraging participation and enhancing efficiency of virtual mobility in higher education. The central focus was on the position of the virtual mobility coordinator, if such exists. There will be an overview of the main research findings reflecting the present situation in managing the virtual mobility. Sharing good experience, including the MoreVM project results, could increase the development of the virtual mobility and get similar attention and success as Erasmus physical mobility. Virtual mobility could be a valuable example also for countries outside of EU.

The action researcher as tempered radical and strategic entrepreneur in higher education: a personal reflection

This article describes the discovery of action research by a ‘conscious incompetent’ in higher education. The influences on the development of an action researcher’s individual philosophy are discussed. These shape a specific investigation into the implementation of international staff exchange in a post-1992 UK university from the position of an ‘outsider within’, a tempered radical. Ontological and epistemological concepts of quasi-objectivity, subjectivity, participation and commitment are discussed in relation to entrepreneurship in the higher education context, concluding that action research is a methodology suitable for tempered radicals and strategic entrepreneurs and that the action researcher can play these roles to research the execution of international faculty mobility in higher education.

Multicultural Competence Level of University Instructors: A Perspective from a Turkish Context

All around the world student mobility in higher education is becoming increasingly important. The mobility of university students has created classrooms where there are students with diverse backgrounds. In these multicultural classrooms, it has become essential for university instructors to understand the changing demographics of students. They must be competent enough to deliver a lecture to diverse groups. To help the instructors with their deficiencies it is important to research whether they are capable of managing cultural differences in their classrooms.In Turkey, multicultural education has gained importance. This study examines university instructors’ competence in their capability to teach students from diverse backgrounds and determine whether there is a relationship between their multicultural competence level, and their gender, and discipline taught. A quantitative, descriptive survey research design was used. 136 instructors teaching different disciplines at Yildiz Technical University and Marmara University in Turkey participated in the study. The participants were chosen according to random sampling method. It is seen that gender and disciplines taught play a role in multicultural competence. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n14p415