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Teachers and Teaching theory and practice
ISSN: 1354-0602 (Print) 1470-1278 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctat20
Theorizing student mobility in an era of globalization
Fazal Rizvi
To cite this article: Fazal Rizvi (2011) Theorizing student mobility in an era of globalization, Teachers and Teaching, 17:6, 693-701, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.625145
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2011.625145
Published online: 26 Oct 2011.
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Theorizing student mobility in an era of globalization
Fazal Rizvi*
Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
(Received 11 February 2011; final version received 25 February 2011)
Over the past two decades, considerable importance has been attached around the world to international student mobility as a way of internationalization of higher education. A whole range of institutional strategies have been employed to encourage students to consider education abroad, either on a short term basis, on a study tour or educational exchange, or enrolling for a longer period in degree awarding programs. At the same time, in many ways, international mobility for education has become a marker of success and social status. As a result, the num- ber of students studying in higher educational institutions outside their national borders has increased from less than half a million in mid-1980s to almost three million now. In this paper, I want to discuss this historical phenomenon both as an expression of and response to the contemporary processes of globalization. I want to argue that the growing student interest in international mobility cannot be adequately understood without paying attention to the ways in which institutional strategies for the recruitment of international students articulate with the shifting social imaginaries of people, broadly linked to the processes of globalization. In developing my argument, I want to use the illustrated case of Australian higher education and the manner in which it has been enormously successful in captur- ing the changing cultural and political dynamics of globalization.
Shifting historical rationales
International mobility of students has, of course, always been an important feature of higher education. From their very beginning, universities have attracted scholars from abroad, stressing the importance of intellectual exchange of information and ideas. Historical evidence suggests that foreigners traveled long distances to study at ancient universities in India, China, and the Middle East (Guruz, 2008). In the seventh and eighth centuries, for example, students flocked to Indian universities such as Nalanda, Takshila, and Sarnath not only to study art, architecture, and reli- gion but also the sciences and mathematics. Alexandria, Fez, and Baghdad housed major centers of learning, hosting a large number of scholars and students from Greece and Rome. In turn, medieval European universities, such as Bologna and Padua, attracted students from Asia and the Middle East. There is thus nothing new about international student mobility.
The notion of exchange of ideas and intercultural learning has always been a part of the mission of higher education. But beyond these broad objectives, student motivations for mobility, on the one hand, and the guiding principles and institu-
*Email: frizvi@unimelb.edu.au
Teachers and Teaching: theory and practiceAquatic Insects Vol. 17, No. 6, December 2011, 693–701
ISSN 1354-0602 print/ISSN 1470-1278 online � 2011 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2011.625145 http://www.tandfonline.com
tional forms around mobility, on the other, have varied greatly over the years. Rationales underlying international mobility of students and scholars have been historically situated, located within a broader understanding of the global dynamics relevant to the particular and shifting historical circumstances. Indeed the phenomenon of mobility does not only express broader historical shifts it also sometimes drives them. Mobility gives shape to institutional forms and has the potential of transforming social identities.
This can clearly be shown by pointing to the ways in which during the colonial period, from the eighteenth century, international student mobility was linked mostly to various colonial arrangements designed to develop a local elite that was sympa- thetic to the economic and political interests of the colonial powers. While these unidirectional and asymmetrical arrangements were often justified in terms of ‘the civilizing mission of education,’ they also masked a deeper imperial logic. From the perspective of the colonizing powers, the rationale for international student mobility largely resided in the fact that the empires needed an educated administrative class able to manage local populations. To perform this task, the development of ‘western’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes among the indigenous elite was consid- ered essential. International education was designed at least in part to impart such attributes.
Graduates of European universities, it was assumed, would return to the colonies, not only appropriately socialized in western modernist dispositions but also indebted to their colonial masters. In this way, the western idea of modernity was fundamental to the role universities were asked to play in meeting the political needs of the empires. The local elites within the colonies, on the other hand, viewed education at a leading European university, such as Oxford, Cambridge and London in England, or Sorbonne in France, as a kind of ‘finishing’ school, enabling them to ‘mimic’ the col- onizers (Bhabha, 1994) and thus maintain their position of power, by marking them- selves apart from the rest of their fellow citizens. In this way, international education serves as a social technology, designed to differentiate classes of people.
After independence, in the post-colonial era, international student mobility was still highly prized, but now had to assume a new rationale, driven largely by the ideologies of nationalism and ‘developmentalism.’ Programs such as the Colombo and Fulbright Plans – and also similar plans in the Soviet Union – were created to provide opportunities for talented students in the newly independent countries to acquire advanced, technical, scientific, and administrative training. Designed primar- ily as a foreign aid program, the Colombo Plan, for example, represented a commit- ment by the richer Commonwealth countries to provide education that was considered necessary for the development of the new nations (Oakman, 2005).
The focus of this education under these aid programs was on transfer of knowl- edge and skills, and local capacity building, the elements of which were selected largely to meet the nationalist aspirations of industrialization and economic develop- ment. These programs were not however crafted solely in support of these develop- ment aspirations: it was also linked to the strategic interests of the West within the broader ‘cold war’ politics. An ‘aid’ program was viewed as a key instrument in public diplomacy, designed to make it less likely for the newly independent nations to fall into the communist block. This line of thinking was perhaps most clearly evident in the Fulbright Plan, created by the United States as an exercise in ‘soft power’ (Nye, 2005), leading Soviet bloc to develop similar programs.
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By the mid-1980s, however, the ‘developmentalist’ assumptions underlying such educational aid programs were no longer popular. Not only was the cold war coming to an end – making the programs of educational aid arguably unnecessary, but the discourse of development itself was also increasingly treated as ideologically suspect. It was argued, for example, that the ideology of development represented a new form of colonial practice that effectively institutionalized global inequalities of power, and that notions such as knowledge transfer served the interests of the economically developed countries more so than they helped the poorer nations (Escobar, 1991). It was pointed out, moreover, that a large proportion of interna- tional students did not return to their countries of origin to take up the developmen- tal roles that had been envisaged for them, contributing to what became known as the phenomenon of ‘brain drain’ (Rizvi, 2005).
At the same time, under the financial pressures of their own, universities in the developed countries felt they could no longer continue to support international stu- dents, especially with a declining number of scholarships provided by governments. They noted moreover that many of these students came from elite families who could easily afford to pay tuition. In Australia, debates around these issues were rehearsed in two major government reports, prepared by Golding (1985) and Jackson (1986). These reports presented two somewhat contrasting views of interna- tional student mobility: in terms of ‘aid’, as had traditionally been the case, on the one hand, and ‘trade’, as it was strongly suggested by Jackson, on the other.
Against the backdrop of a shifting set of historical conditions, Australia became one of the first countries to recognize the potential of a new discourse of interna- tional student mobility that did not entirely abandon the development aspirations of the Colombo Plan but supplemented it with the language of educational markets. It was widely believed that the legacy of the Colombo Plan, which had helped forge a powerful elite in Asia well disposed toward Australian education, could be used to create an educational market in higher education, recruiting initially fee-paying students from the fast developing countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, where the demand for Australian education appeared considerable. Similar sentiments existed in the UK, whose universities were able due to their colonial legacy to begin treating international students as a source of revenue, within the context of declining public funds.
The Australian policy shift from ‘aid’ to ‘trade’ turned out to be relatively seam- less (Harman, 2004), leading to the emergence of a new ‘markets’ perspective on international education that is now widely celebrated. It would be wrong however to characterize this perspective as totally market-driven. Instead it had a hybrid form that did not entirely abandon the older ‘development’ rationales for international student mobility, as it continued not only to stress the traditional values of educa- tion but also the notions of modernization, social and cultural development, capac- ity-building, and the role of education in promoting international relations.
However, superimposed upon these sentiments emerged a newer discourse of educational markets and institutional reform linked to the concerns of revenue gen- eration for universities, building institutional profile and reputation, diversifying the campus, and the development of human resources for a fast globalizing economy. As Jane Knight (2004) has pointed out, this view of international student mobility contained a range of competing ideas and practices, focused, on the one hand, upon the need to integrate an international perspective into the primary functions of teaching, research and service, and to promote international activities for ‘mutually
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beneficial relationship’, and the opportunities to develop a robust set of market practices, enabling higher education to become ‘an export industry’ in which universities competed for students and funds, on the other.
In Australia, this hybrid formation was institutionalized in 1988 by the so-called Dawkins reforms, which not only introduced the higher education contribution scheme (HECS) for domestic students but also allowed universities to charge international students full cost-recovery tuition fees. Yet while the introduction of HECS was politically contested to some extent, the policy on international student fees was embraced by most universities in Australia with great enthusiasm, unleash- ing a culture of entrepreneurialism that had been inconceivable earlier in the decade. This entrepreneurialism did not however reject the importance of international rela- tions through which the Australian government had promoted its strategic interests within the Asia-Pacific region (Beazley, 1992). Instead, it sought to re-define the ways in which universities could now relate to Australia’s regional neighbors, and how they needed to engage with the emerging dynamics of globalization that had unleashed various commercial opportunities in services. It encouraged a new kind of knowledge about international relations and programs based on a particular inter- pretation of the changing nature of the global economy in which knowledge was increasingly viewed as a commodity, and in which national development itself was believed to require a new set of globally transferable skills.
Technologies of recruitment
Against this perspective relating to the commercial value of knowledge, an empha- sis upon student recruitment became an increasingly dominant feature of Australian higher education, with activities of international education filtered through the lens of marketing. During the 1990s, large bureaucracies were created at all Australian universities to recruit international students and meet their needs as clients. Market- ing initiatives of international offices at universities came to occupy a central place within the administrative structure of Australian universities. While other aspects of internationalization, such as teaching and learning, were not entirely overlooked, market concerns disproportionally attracted the attention of senior university admin- istrators, as they struggled to balance their budgets within the context of declining public funds. The success of universities was now measured in terms of the number of fee-paying international students, and celebrated by government agencies, as in the case of the annual Export of Education Award. Each year universities and the media noted the spectacular increase in the number of students, often sidelining the critical issues of quality and the capacity of universities to provide them with the promised educational experiences.
Within less than 10 years, most Australians began to view international educa- tion as an industry, with its own administrative technology. As with other industries, this technology created its own rules of operation based on an expertise that incor- porated knowledge of market segments and specificities as well as a symbolic lan- guage about the distinctive benefits of internationalization. Developed also were highly specialized structures and functions responsible for global operations, as, for example, in well-developed advertising and marketing programs conducted not only through the media but also through educational Expos and market-orientated confer- ences. Complex articulation arrangements with overseas educational providers were negotiated to ensure a steady flow of students. A highly innovative system was forged for the use of recruitment agents, who were often the first point of contact
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between potential students and the university. Also established was a vast array of transnational programs, to teach in which Australian academics and support staff traveled far and wide (McBurnie & Ziguras, 2005).
The spectacular rise in the number of international students now attending Australian higher education – from around 40,000 in 1989 to more than half a million in 2010 – could not have however been achieved without the role played by the Australian government, whose policy settings were highly supportive of entrepreneurial activities, allowing recruitment practices to take place through its diplomatic missions. The work of Austrade in casting higher education in trade terms was also crucial. Australia also provided leadership in steering international organizations, such as the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), toward a discourse of global markets in education, beyond a view of edu- cational mobility that was already familiar to Europeans through EU programs such as Erasmus. It actively participated in many of the negotiations over a General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organization, aimed at determining a globally agreed set of rules for trade in educational services. It also forged a nexus between its education and immigration policies. Through its ‘points’ system, Australia’s immigration policy permitted potential students in many fields of study an easier path to permanent residence.
As important as these specific initiatives of the Australian government and uni- versities were, the development of a market-oriented view of international student mobility cannot however be fully comprehended without an understanding of the dynamics of globalization within which it became possible for Australia to capture higher education’s commercial potential. This dynamics is clearly embodied within the language of GATS, but relates more broadly to a social imaginary of globaliza- tion (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010).
Student mobility and shifting imaginaries
The concept of globalization has of course been defined in many different ways, but common to most definitions is the idea of social processes that describe the rapid movement of ideas, goods, and people around the globe, radically transform- ing relations among people and communities across national borders (Cohen & Kennedy, 2007). Driven largely by developments in information and communication technologies, globalization has given rise to new forms of transnational interconnec- tivity. It has implied that while people continue to live in particular localities, these localities are increasingly integrated into larger systems of global networks.
Crucially, however, it needs to be noted that globalization involves both an objective and a subjective dimension. It seeks to represent an objective account of the ways in which geographical constraints on economic, political, and cultural activities are receding; but on a more subjective level, it suggests that people around the world are becoming increasingly aware of this fact and are re-shaping their lives accordingly. As people – as well as governments and institutions such as universities – experience on a daily basis the realities of transnational economic relations, technological and media innovations, and cultural flows that cut across national borders, with greater speed and intensity than ever before, they increasingly use these experiences to make strategic calculations of their futures, and how they might take advantage of the opportunities global interconnectivity now offers.
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These calculations are not however made in a void, but within an imaginary of global conditions and possibilities. Appadurai (1996) has argued that while we live in a world that offers a multiplicity of social imaginaries of the ways in which the world is now interconnected, a particular imaginary has become globally dominant This imaginary is informed by the various assumptions of neo-liberalism, influencing not only the processes of state and institutional decision-making but also the strategic calculations individuals make. As a range of loosely connected ideas, the neo-liberal imaginary of globalization implies the extension of market relations through which people, communities, institutions, and states are now assumed to be globally interconnected (Steger, 2009).
In policy terms, this view replaces an earlier imaginary that had assumed the importance of state provision of goods and services as a way of ensuing the social well-being of a national population, and as a way of forging social and national cohesion. In contrast, the neo-liberal imaginary advocates a minimalist state, con- cerned with the promotion of the instrumental values of competition and choice across national boundaries. It rests on a pervasive naturalization of the logic of the markets, justifying it on the grounds of both individual autonomy and social effi- ciency. It preaches the principle of global ‘free trade’, applying it equally to both goods and services, including education, which had once been marked by its largely national character.
The neo-liberalism imaginary thus encourages a particular way of interpreting global interconnectivity, as an objective set of social processes, the logic of which is designed to steer people and institutions alike toward a particular subjective awareness of recent changes in global economy and culture. It thus promotes not only a specific way of interpreting the ‘facts’ of global interconnectivity but also the values attached to that interpretation. In this way, neo-liberalism is highly nor- mative, and directs us toward a collective consciousness of the world as an inter- connected space, in which new commercial opportunities exist for global trade in areas that had once been regarded as public goods. Australia was one of the first countries to seize upon these opportunities, with its higher education institutions recognizing how the global knowledge economy had created a class of students who were prepared to invest in global mobility for higher education, and who con- sidered the value of international knowledge networks in largely economic terms.
Australian policies and institutional practices on student mobility were arguably developed within this neo-liberal imaginary and involved a set of assumptions about the calculations students and their parents make with respect to educational invest- ment, and returns on international education. International students had traditionally been motivated by such factors as lack of opportunities at home; perceptions of bet- ter curriculum and pedagogy; prestige associated with international education; fol- lowing family tradition and social networks; interest in travel and a more cosmopolitan life; and greater freedom and independence abroad, possibilities of immigration or permanent residence, and so on. However, what the Australian universities recognized early was that a new set of factors linked to the neo-liberal imaginary, such as assumptions about returns on educational investment and better employment prospects in transnational corporations, as well as beliefs about the value of international education in the global labor market, were also becoming important.
Through the 1990s, Australia became a global trend setter in developing policies and practices around this insight. Other systems of higher education viewed the
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Australian case with a great deal of interest, and soon embraced a similar discourse about the importance of global mobility of students, developing and following a similar set of industrial practices. The commercial opportunities in international trade in higher education from which Australia had benefited are now pursued by most countries. In one sense, this vindicates Australian universities, but, in the another sense, it poses new challenges for them. While the demand for international education continues to grow, so does the competition.
Over the past decade, for example, the annual global rate of growth in interna- tional student mobility has been around 4.8%, driven by not only China and India but also other countries around the world. On the other hand, most established systems of higher education have developed their own policies to attract fee-paying international students, with considerable success. Regional mobility has been growing steadily, as countries such as Egypt, South Africa, and Singapore become major hubs for interna- tional education (de Wit, Agarwal, Said, Sehoole, & Sirozi, 2008). In Europe, univer- sities are increasingly offering courses in English in order to attract international students, convinced that English is now the lingua franca of the global economy.
At the same time, however, and especially after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, a range of concerns have emerged about the neo-liberal imaginary, and the mar- ket model of higher education to which it had given rise. These concerns apply to all systems of education but are particularly relevant to Australia higher education, given its heavier reliance on international students as a source of revenue. To begin with, there are some legitimate concerns about issues of quality, capacity, and support provided to international students in Australian universities (Marginson, Nyland, Sawir, & Forbes-Mewatt, 2010). There is now considerable evidence of exploitative practices within the educational markets that have been inadequately regulated.
It is also clear that the fields of Business Studies, Engineering, and Computer Education remain dominant in international student mobility, with more than 70% students enrolled in these disciplinary areas; and that English appears to have become institutionalized as the language of international education. In one sense, given the neo-liberal imaginary of globalization this is not surprising, yet in another sense the knowledge asymmetry that this represents is unhelpful to higher educa- tion’s broader mission, which cannot afford to be driven more by the profit motive than by its traditional cultural and educational concerns. Problematic therefore is the fact that international mobility in higher education has largely become a private good, available mostly to the transnational elite.
The philosopher, Taylor (2004), has noted that social imaginaries are always dynamics: they contain within them the seeds of resistance and opposition, and the potential for change. If this is so then the neo-liberal imaginary, upon which the Australian commercial success in international education is largely based, cannot persist for ever. If contradictions of their approach to international student mobility are becoming apparent then Australian universities need to renew their thinking, and develop new discourses and practices of internationalization of higher educa- tion, consistent with the emerging dynamics and possibilities of transnationality. It is now increasingly clear that the global context within which student mobility takes place is now characterized by multiple ties and interactions linking people and insti- tutions across the borders of nation-states – not always mediated by international relations, but defined by systems of ties, interactions, exchanges, and mobilities that demand reciprocity and mutual benefit. As higher education systems around the world embrace mobility, there is a growing awareness of the new demands and
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possibilities of collaboration and networking among institutions dealing with knowledge production and dissemination (Vertovec, 2008).
This new ‘transnational’ context of higher education can no longer assume asymmetrical power relations that had in the past resulted in uni-directional flow of students – from the rest to the West. With the changing political architecture of the world, there are now numerous challenges to this asymmetry of global power relations, as well as an erosion of the market fundamentalism that defines the neo- liberal imaginary of globalization. There is now a confident assertion of knowledge traditions other than western scientific rationalism, together with the recognition of non-economic values. At the same time, the developments in technology have eroded the distinction between knowledge production and dissemination, and have given rise to new pedagogic possibilities of the ubiquitous social media and com- munication technologies, such as the Open Source and Open Access Movement. Major shifts in youth cultures are accompanied by new practices of global network- ing, transforming the ways in which international student mobility is now envisaged and experienced.
Conclusion
These and other developments have highlighted the importance of transnational col- laborations in higher education, ahead of a focus on educational markets and their commercial possibilities. They suggest regularized, on-going, and symmetrical trans- national links inherent in the emerging distributive systems of knowledge develop- ment and dissemination. They indicate the need to create transnational bilateral and multilateral teaching and research networks among both universities and industries, as a way of developing new modes of sharing income, resources, and effort.
If the neo-liberal market view of international education was largely about recruiting students, enabling them to experience international education, then the emphasis on transnational collaborations implies rethinking the nature and scope of that education itself. Emerging in the new context is the need to re-examine the tra- ditional curriculum, challenged now by the claims of ‘other’ knowledge traditions, and to develop new pedagogies that are more responsive to recent innovations in social media and the ubiquitous technologies of communication. Beyond the focus on educational markets, it is indeed possible for universities around the world to work toward a new social imaginary that views transnational collaborations in higher education as not only socially and culturally productive but are also economically efficient.
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