Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality?

Abstract

The paper critically reviews the widely adopted definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education shaped by Knight and colleagues since 1993 through successive revisions and intended for universal application. Here, internationalisation is defined as ‘the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension’ into post-secondary education. The definition has long led cross-border scholarship, discourse and practice, being promoted in support of a wide range of governmental, commercial and institutional agendas. However, the disjunction between idea and reality has increasingly troubled advocates of the definition; and underlying this tension are more fundamental difficulties. It attempts to unify contradictory cross-border practices under the leadership of the global West/North. The geography of the definition rests on an ideological binary of ‘globalisation’ (bad) and ‘internationalisation’ (good) that locks practitioners into nation-bound approaches. The definition is non-relational in form yet relational in consequence, focused on characteristics of the self – the person, the institution, the nation – without regard for the consequences of internationalisation for the other. Hence when applied by Western/Northern agents the definition facilitates continued Euro-American domination. The paper suggests a different approach to terminology, geography, relationality and power in cross-border education.