Students Staff And Academic Mobility In Higher Education

Academic mobility in higher education is an old phenomenon, but it has become a high profile issue as the numbers of students and staff engaged, and the number of countries involved, has increased hugely in the last few decades. For this reason and many others – political, cultural and educational – this book reports research on the many facets of the experience and people involved, both now and in the past. The emphasis in research has so far tended to focus on contemporary student mobility but this collection deliberately includes articles on mobile staff, because the question of mobility is a matter for universities and higher education in its entirety and not just a matter of bringing new students into existing and unchanging lectures, laboratories and seminars. Despite the fact that universities are and have been international institutions in their composition from the beginning, universities became in the 19th and 20th century de facto national institutions. This has changed and continues to change in the 21st century, for many reasons, but often financial, as universities seek to enhance their budgets in a globalised economy, and students seek to enhance their employment chances by acquiring qualifications with a difference. However, even if the starting point is financial, nonetheless the chapters in this book demonstrate that the effects of mobility are much more far-reaching. The effects are on host universities, on the university community of staff and students, on the ways in which staff and students understand the nature of university study, on the ways students may or may not integrate with a local community. By experiencing something different—for institutions, an influx of students with different ideas about academic study, for students an interaction with ‘locals’ and with other ‘internationals’, for staff a challenge to their assumptions about teaching and learning—all see themselves in a new light and are often forced to change. This book charts the changes which are happening now and will undoubtedly continue for the foreseeable future. It therefore offers all involved a reflection on their own experience and practice and the means of improving them.

This book examines current trends in global student mobility patterns in several key host and destination countries, including the United States, China, India, South Africa, Mexico, Australia, and Germany, among others, and will explore the national and global-level factors that contribute to these trends.

This book offers a contemporary perspective on the mobility of academics across the globe. With contributions from authors based across 4 continents focusing on the experience of academic mobility in Africa, Australia, Europe, the Gulf and the United States, the volume is both comprehensive and relevant.

Continuous and rapid developments in global higher education today more than ever before present new questions, greater challenges, and vast new opportunities for institutions, policy makers, scholars and students alike. This book is a collection of studies and essays by many of the leading experts in international higher education who share their analysis of current trends and the implications they see for present and future policy and practice. The volume is organized into three sections that address, first, global, supranational concerns in internationalization and mobility; second, focus on specific cases in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Africa, Asia, and Latin America; and third share profiles of individual institutions, practitioners and participants involved in uniquely shaping international education in their everyday practice. The intention of this book is to expand the scope of research in the field of Comparative and International Education, to facilitate theory development, to influence policy formation, and most of all to inform anyone fascinated by the evolving and dynamic processes related to educational internationalization and global mobility. This book will be a valuable information source for scholars, policy makers and students intent on understanding the wide scope of factors that today are shaping the fluid and changing global higher education landscape.

Higher education increasingly entails a crossing of national, linguistic and cultural boundaries. Recent years have seen significant expansion in the sector around transnational education and online learning, with students, academic staff, educational programmes and even institutions all ever-more mobile. This expansion is usually seen in unproblematic terms, with economic growth the main priority in view. The challenge that is entailed in pursuing social justice in the face of such global expansion, however, should not be underestimated. This book subjects to critical scrutiny the uncertainties that are associated with internationalised higher education. It explores how the agency of teachers, other members of staff and students is mediated by experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Physical or virtual movement around the globe may have become more straightforward in recent years, but the same cannot be said of intercultural relations in classrooms. Challenges can be expected where concerns, projects and practices of students are pursued in an unfamiliar cultural setting, or where agency crosses over more than one cultural system. Finally, mobility often throws up situations in which privileges are accompanied by distressing challenges. The book teases out the implications of all these issues for teaching in higher education. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of education, politics, sociology, human geography and social work. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Teaching in Higher Education.

This book develops a comprehensive understanding of the motivations and experiences of students who choose to study abroad for the whole or part of a degree. It includes case studies of students from East Asia, Europe and the UK, and considers the implications of their movement for contemporary higher education.