Cross Border Higher Education

On 14 August the final report of a panel charged with advising the Canadian government on its first international education strategy was released. The report provides a roadmap for achieving the panel’s vision for international education, including doubling the number of full-time international students in Canada from 239,000 in 2011 to more than 450,000 over the next decade.

Engaging globally has becomes both more popular and more complex. In turn, universities are beginning to adopt a variety of approaches – often led by institution heads.

In this brave new world, how do you go about developing a strategy that works and is embedded in your existing institutional culture? How do you pick your partners and as universities start multiple partnerships in multiple countries, how do you determine who the stakeholders are, to whom you should be accountable? And, perhaps most contentious of all, how do you assess internationalisation strategies? Should universities measure their activities or the impact of those activities? Ultimately, what does quality look like in international higher education?

Ten years after the formal introduction of bachelor and masters degrees at German higher education institutions in the wake of the Bologna reforms, most courses have been adapted to the new degree system.

The International Unit undertakes a limited amount of investigative and analytical work with its own resources, although the majority of our projects are commissioned from external consultants.

While the 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation are adopting joint measures to promote higher education and research, OIC member Kazakhstan is implementing bilateral agreements and memoranda to establish a Central Asian higher education area.

These recent developments were outlined in the final communiqué of the Fourth Extraordinary Islamic Summit Conference "Promotion of Islamic Solidarity”, held in Makkah Al Mukarrammah in Saudi Arabia from 14-15 August, and at the Eurasian Higher Education Leaders Forum, held in Astana in Kazakhstan from 20-21 August.

The EAIE is committed to recognising the outstanding contributions of professionals and institutions working in internationalisation of higher education. Each year, the EAIE presents awards to individuals and institutions which have ‘gone the extra mile’ for international higher education, officially honouring them at the Annual EAIE Conference. Here, the EAIE is proud to introduce the innovative university and the remarkable professionals who have been pursuing outstanding endeavours.

In today’s increasingly global and competitive environment, universities are being forced to think more strategically about how to position and profile themselves in order to respond to externally driven change, and internationalisation is increasingly identified as a key response. This is where, and why, strategic planning and internationalisation are coming together, with internationalisation objectives increasingly (re)shaping both the academic agenda and the organisational structure of many universities.