Internationalization, a frequently used trend in the industries of globalized village though it cannot be claimed as a latest phenomenon and does absolutely represent a long-lasting historical background, which is also commonly mistaken by many people as identical to globalization. However, the term internationalization as described by Gerald Susman “is a process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets”. His stance gives a simple and comfortable epistemological foundation to discuss about the effects of internalization of education.
The concept of internationalization has allowed many birds coming into the nests of European universities also permitting them to have wider choices in their educational preferences rather than just relying on their localized Educational standards. Commercial advantage, knowledge, language acquisition, and enhancing the curriculum with international content can be seen as the most-valuable reasoning that motivate internationalization in the sector of Education. These benefits should be considered as the optimistic effects of internationalization integrating the industrial standardization by also giving priorities to the individual identities.
An internationally standardized classroom and campus also would embark the facility for students to enjoy the concepts of ‘inter-culturalism and anti-bologna/anti-Europeanism’ in their learning process. This is the point where most students would feel un-comfortable with the different cultures and would start getting the sick of cultural shock. However, there would be also general understandings and misconceptions regarding some specific concerns in the beginning months of the university life, and this is an often-experienced issue in all internationalized industries giving great opportunities to view a concern from different cultural perspectives.
A commonly reported issue with international students is the sky-scrapping tuition fees charged by the Universities, yet it can be profitable from the universities’ perspective and adds much psychological value to the qualification of students’. It also can be negatively affect the conformability of studying abroad paying attention to the cost of living and the political clamouring in finding part-time jobs and allocating working hours. However, scholarship programmes have won more bargaining from the students who come from slum (poor) and dark (war-affected) hosts while also promoting the concept of ‘green’ for the universities and therefore increasing their sustainable awareness in different cultures.
The greatest benefit of internationalization is the language English itself since most students especially from Asia always have an option of studying English as their secondary language in their home countries and is can be seen as a very positive aspect of studying abroad where English is used for coaching. Meanwhile the drawbacks of preferring countries such as Netherlands, German and Russia should be also admired where the language of coordinating is strictly limited to their own. The major drawback of this system is that these languages can only be used in those nations and in outside, they all become useless. Therefore, getting an internationally recognized qualification denotes the ability of working in multi-national organizations where multi-culturalism is known to be the main asset.
Such an internalized educational opportunity gives an opportunity to involve and learn about the politics, social and the cultural life of the UK. In turn, this can provide an opening for the change of attitude towards learning and participating in the social and cultural life of their host countries while maintaining their ‘countries’ identity’ in order to be the most successful ‘global citizen’. Political revolutions and gender based equality awareness that happen all over the world especially in the Middle East can also be viewed as a positive effect caused by international Education and due to the common cultural understandings and adoptions caused.
Intellectuality and information are vital components of achieving this empowerment and integration. Because of the transnational nature of private universities, the internalized education can be a channel for the Sri Lankan community to understand about the necessary political, social and cultural developments in the transnational spaces. Moreover, internalised education provides avenues to balance the discrepancy that exists among a certain ethnic group. For example, in terms of education there is a big gap between the Tamil Diaspora Community and Tamil people of Sri Lanka. In turn, such a discrepancy in quality education may tempt to create other discrepancies such as economical discrepancies.
The unseen or untouched part of internationalization of many scholars is ‘franchising’, which also remains as a flexible transfer of internationalized curricula in different countries with the institutions that have the ability of providing standardized education in the standardized quality. Franchising has turned to be one convenient way of expanding the borders of universities in different countries, allowing international students the option of getting internationally recognized qualification from their home country while admiring the criticisms of dumping the actual quality of qualification to some extent.
The best example would be Staffordshire University’s franchising partner APIIT that provides the same qualification allowing students to study from Sri Lanka. It allows not only attracting the local (Sri Lankan) students to this programme but also attracting students from closed nations such as Maldives and India and the foreigners who live in Sri Lanka for commercial and professional purposes. Yet, it can be also viewed as a positive way of commercializing among the un-touched or un-attracted markets in the host countries where people are more backward to adapt different cultures. For an example, franchising would be the best choice in the Middle East. Offering online programmes also can be viewed in the same manner.
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2 comments:
Very interesting and a well researched article.
A thoughtful article. Well done..!
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