The Context of Internationalization in the Higher Education Sector

Since 1990s, universities around the world have become more internationally active through increased student mobility, staff mobility, and the international dimension of curricula. Universities became more concerned of the international dimension whether in their missions or in their actions. Most today universities’ mission statements have included words such as society, region, international, global, overseas, worldwide, and more specifically international partnerships with overseas universities.

There are now more international visits, attachments and exchanges, research collaborations, and cooperation or franchising agreements, and a more active international market in overseas student and staff recruitment. Most universities have clear intentions towards international partnerships, but intentions are not enough. Exploring challenges to establishing partnerships will be of great importance to university leaders in order to activate their intentions. All universities’ managers will try to create a position that allow their institutions to face such challenges. In other words, they will make their ultimate use of their economic behavior of managing the transaction costs of their international cooperation. Such management will require more structural, organized and approachable behavior. Partnerships will be an economic solution for such challenges.

International partnerships in higher education can be achieved through an academic network, and in the nineties, several supra-regional networks have emerged which cover multiple regions or are even global in scope (e.g. Universitas 21; Global University Alliance, Erasmus Mundus, TEMPUS). Waralkaulle (2004) suggests that these links and partnerships between universities, whilst assisting to bring the universities closer to each other, also help to bring about mobility of teachers and students between universities. Staff and student mobility between partner universities is a vital aspect of link arrangements. He argues that a very successful example of student and staff mobility is the European Union’s Socrates/Erasmus Programme, where more than a million people have taken advantage of the programme since its launch in 1987, ie, to pick up new skills, learn another language and see new ways of working. There are approximately 2500 universities in all European countries involved in the programme, which introduces students to new ideas and other cultures. Wende (2003) argues that the specific higher education actions of ERASMUS and SOCRATES lead to still-growing cooperation between institutions in the various European member states.

Titles such as the Association of Universities, Institutional Networks, Consortiums, Joint Projects…etc became very common in the higher education sector. Networking became a clear solution for the problem of cooperation between universities, and the management of the networks became more vulnerable and briefing for the whole network. The brand names of such networks became more spilled over, more global and more recognized by the users of higher education. When you hear the words TEMPUS, Erasmus, Leonardo de Vinci, Socrates, you will feel the spirit of European education and culture.

TEMPUS Programme became as an important structure for cooperation in higher education. This is to strengthen cooperation in higher education between the European Union and its partner countries from the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Mediterranean region and enhances understanding between cultures.