At the Crossroads of Culture and Nation: International Education and Training in English (original) (raw)

Abstract

ecreasing federal funding of the Higher Education sector has forced Australian universities to seek and secure critical funding elsewhere. Many have turned to international markets, hoping the fees paid by overseas students will help to match the funding shortfall. Yet, discursive shifts in the definition of internationalisation in Federal and institutional policy documents signal different messages about what the experience of internationalisation is to be in our universities. Current wording includes intercultural understanding and democracy as core elements. Is this happening, and what is the nation selling under the umbrella of internationalisation? Internationalisation of Australian higher education as a broadly-spread phenomenon is relatively recent. Its current iteration has its origin in the Colombo Plan in 1950 and has evolved in a relatively ad hoc way (Trevaskes, Eisenchlas, & Liddicoat, 2003; Welch & Denman, 1997). Whereas the authors see the Colombo Plan as very much an "aid-out" program, the current notion of internationalisation is an "aid-in" phenomenon. In this review of internationalisation we argue that definitions of the term "internationalisation" and its historical development in Australia highlight disparities between what is publicly promoted or "sold" and its enactment in Australian higher education. Defining internationalism The breeding-house for our claim for disparity is in a literature uncertain of how to define the concept of internationalisation. Typically, Welch and Denman's (1997) attempt to establish a consensual view of internationalisation of higher education in the existing literature to 1997 was unsuccessful. Six years later, Trevaskes, Eisenchlas and Liddicoat (2003) fared no better. The latter group wrote that internationalisation was still a "slippery concept" (p. 1). In 2005, we remain in much the same position. So, in the absence of consensus, where are the threads of understanding? An early and frequently cited definition of internationalisation came from the work of Knight and de Wit as they (Knight, 1994; Knight & de Wit, 1995) thought and wrote separately and collaboratively about the concept: D

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