There are some questions: How can universities stay true to their values while adapting to changes? As expectations rise and resources tighten, higher education is rethinking its purpose, leadership and global role.

Education is not just a personal investment-it’s a strategic one for society as a whole.

Higher education faces the new realities and turbulence of globalization. Development of the future teachers’ skills and competences is necessary for the work in multicultural environments. The contribution of the international programmes, students’ mobilities and staff mobility in teaching degrees could be the opportunity for the internationalization at the sending and receiving institutions. The management of the international programmes through the international office in universities already demonstrate the key role of the decision makers. This paper seeks to explore and identify different methods of managing

effectively the challenges faced by internationalization in higher education.

At European and international level, the central role of higher education institutions is clearly underlined. In that sense, international cooperation aims to strengthen relations between partners through the exchange of experience and by boosting the internationalization of the education sector.

According to Hoy &Miskel (2008), as open systems, educational institutions are tremendously and constantly influenced by their external environment; more significantly, their very survival is dependent on the environmental elements from which they acquire resources and into which they export their products.

The literature describing trends and explaining aspects of higher education (HE) internationalization has been diverse. Scholars concur that the term “internationalization” refers to college and university programming that deal with international education in the areas of teaching, research, and service to successfully engage in and meet the challenges of globalization (Bruce, 2009; Burnett & Huisman, 2010). In the area of learning, in particular, the goal is to provide high international standards. Another goal is to give students the key qualifications that are important in an international labor market defined by globalization and internationalization. This includes: intercultural skills, knowledge of European and international connections, an understanding of other cultures and ways of working, expertise and knowledge of foreign languages and the expansion of each individual’s horizons.

Internationalization of HE has been defined as “The process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education” (Knight, 2004). This definition is considered to be most comprehensive because it integrates an intercultural and international dimension into all areas of the university functioning. We can consider that cooperation between universities will support the participating universities in establishing standards in the internationalization work by focusing on cross-cultural communication and solving problems in an international environment. Therefore, it is important to identify the fundamental objectives for an effective internationalization process, emphasizing the indicators of internationalization used by participating parties from their good practice.

The purpose of the paper is to explore and identify different indicators of effectively managing the challenges faced by internationalization in higher education.

Objectives for effective HE Internationalization 

Modernization of higher education is necessary in curriculum, financing and governance, thus helping higher education institutions face the challenges of globalization and contribute in a more effective way to professional training and reconversion of the European active population. Modernization projects imply actions to increase the attractiveness of higher education institutions and to make them more responsive to the needs of the labour market, citizens and society in general.

Cooperation within these projects can include:

• Elaborating lifelong learning strategies and reinforcing the link between higher education on one side and vocational training on the other side, thus helping HEIs become “continuous education centres” or “open education centres” in their region.
• Ensuring transparency of mission and performance of HEIs, increasing quality, improving governance or diversifying funding.

Effective HE internationalization, desirable and necessary, is not just rationalization and strengthening of existing bridges and traditional networks. It also requires bilateral participation of scientists from diverse backgrounds emphasizing qualitative aspects more than quantitative in order to build professional competences.

According to Alatas (2003), true internationalization should seek the following objectives:

1. To enlarge the territorial and ethnic approaches.
2. To provide research data and theories beyond national borders, to test its consistency and validity.
3. To investigate the national variances to help raise awareness and identify limiting factors and theory limits.

Generally speaking, we can take into account that the objectives of universities seeking for effective internationalization should: strengthen the bilateral relations between the partners by enhancing intercultural dialogue between staff and experts from partner universities; provide key skills and service effectiveness for university staff in organizing the activity in different directions.

This might be achieved by increasing the number and quality of mobility for:

1. a) students – study and placement mobilities through dissemination and promotion of activities, cultural integration support, ECTS integral recognition and other methods of recognition, quality assurance in partnerships &language competence;
2. b) teachers & academic staff – teaching and training mobilities through formal and informal recognition of STA and STT mobilities, spin-off effects: other cooperation opportunities, etc. Improvement of services offered by universities through assistance such as: electronic services, language support & cultural courses, orientation and welcome services, etc.

Also, there could be improved the quality in the international services offered by partner universities based on the increased international experience of partners, internationalization at home for non-mobile students could be developed through international activities – workshops, seminars, webinars, summer schools and modules of foreign culture and civilization.

Internationalization indicators 

The Forum of the European Science Foundation (ESF) on internationalization proposed 17 indicators (eight for funding agencies and nine for organizations that do research) for evaluation of actions and internationalization processes.

Indicators for both categories were divided into three groups: seven mature indicators, seven indicators under development and three indicators “blue sky”.

The indicators of the mature category require the development of protocols for collection and analysis of data, to evaluate their quality and comparability. The seven indicators in the category “developing” are conceptual basis, but require traditional data collection to confirm the feasibility and comparability of indicators. The three blue sky indicators designed to evaluate specific aspects of internationalization, have yet to be conceptually developed to find relevant measures connected to the reality observed. With these indicators it is possible to evaluate the internationalization of development agencies and research institutions through activities they develop (Van den Besselaar, 2012).

From the point of view of institutional research internationalization can also be represented by the impact of three main processes: promoting flow to/from international agencies; collaboration and standard networks between non-national institutions, groups and individuals; and international co-production of knowledge (publications and technology products).

REFERENCES

1. Alatas S. F. (2003) Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labor in

the Social Sciences. Current Sociology. 51(6), 599-613

2. Bruce G. R. (2009) Institutional design and the internationalization of U.S.

postsecondary education institutions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The

OhioState University, Graduate

3. Hoy W. K. & Miskel C. G. (2008) Educational administration: Theory,

research, and practice. New York: McGraw-Hill

4. Knight J. (2004) Internationalization remodelled: Definitions, rationales and

approaches. Journal for Studies in International Education, 8, 5-31

5. Nen M, Liepe Z., Methods for effective management and research in higher education, MTA Academy Publishing House, Bucharest, Romania, 2016; 84
6. Van den Besselaar P., Inzelt A. & Reale E. (2012) International publications as

indicator for internationalisation of funding agencies? In: E. Archambault, Y.

Gingras, V. Larivière (eds.) Proc. Of 17th International Conference on Science

& Technology Indicators 2012. Montreal, Science Metrix & OST, 2012; 121-30

ABOUT

• Madlena Nen, Education MBA Program Director,ASE|BBS