This special issue's topic, the Internationalization of Higher Education has been received a lot of attention from scholars continuously and recently, we can find current international debates on Target 4.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that focuses on the expansion of quality higher education. The importance of higher education is highlighted in a key target outcome of SDG Goal 4 as Target 4.3, which states that “By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university” (United Nations, 2015).
In 2019, The Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualification concerning Higher Education was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference. This is the first United Nations treaty on global higher education. It aims to promote internationalization of higher education and strengthen international collaboration for building fair, transparent and quality higher education (UNESCO, 2019). The internationalization of higher education is a key strategy to achieve this target as it promotes access, increases equity and enhances the overall quality of higher education. Student mobility has been a primary indicator of the internationalization of higher education, especially in the Asia–Pacific region, which is considered to be a very popular destination for international students at present. However, the current monitoring system of the internationalization of higher education relies only on the number of students studying abroad, and there is a lack of indicators that can measure the quality aspects (Wan, 2018).
Furthermore, while student mobility remains a major trend in the region, the concept of internationalization of higher education has been rapidly expanding to include more diverse dimensions. The unprecedented coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic disrupted the rapidly growing internalization of higher education. And it enforced us to reconsider the current internationalization of higher education and transform the traditional approaches of internalization of higher education to accommodate the rapid social changes (de Wit and Altbach, 2021).
Considering the above situation, it is important to explore and discuss a wide range of essential aspects, such as the mobility of academics and professionals, international programs and curricula, as well as government policies and research networks, with a particular focus on the monitoring of internationalization of higher education. Therefore, this special issue focuses on the monitoring of the internationalization of higher education by looking into the current situations of Asia–Pacific countries and regions. We believe that our contributors make original contributions both academically and practically.
This special issue is composed of two volumes, 23.2 and 23.3. This first volume (23.2) includes five papers that focus on the Asia–Pacific region, and three countries such as Japan, Korea and India. In the first article of this issue, Williams et al. (2021) provide a helpful overview of how higher education internationalization is measured and discussed in the Asia–Pacific region. They summarize their findings from a systematic review of publicly available databases and academic sources to demonstrate that despite internationalization being a highly complex and dynamic phenomenon, indicators used to measure and track it relate almost exclusively to student mobility. They explain why they think this is the case, and point out several dimensions and manifestations of higher education internationalization that are overlooked in our policy and scholarly discourse as a result of this narrow focus on student mobility. Williams and colleagues have mapped the field in a way that helps us identify trends and limitations in this multifaceted and rapidly expanding global phenomenon. Readers, who study the internationalization of higher education, both in the Asia–Pacific region and also globally, will surely find their article to be a great big-picture resource.
The second article, written by Watabe and Ota (2021), develops a new system of indicators for measuring the internationalization of universities allowing comparative self-assessment by universities in Asia. Furthermore, this article is significant in terms of offering non-Western insights into the internationalization of higher education. Based on the empirical research results from three surveys targeting Japanese and Asian universities and an expert roundtable discussion, they propose 24 core internationalization indicators categorized into six key dimensions. The six key dimensions are composed of (1) strategy and governance, (2) student and staff characteristics, (3) education and learning, (4) student services, (5) research and (6) quality assurance. Considering the current expectation to higher education institutions (HEIs) to be key drivers to achieve SDGs, Watabe and Ota suggest taking sustainability initiatives into account for measuring university internationalization as future work.
In the third article, Edwards and Ashida (2020) describe the situation of higher education internationalization in Japan, linking it to efforts for promoting the SDGs at national and institutional levels. They explain contextual issues of Japan's internationalization efforts, recent policy and programmatic trends related to this phenomenon, and examine the extent to which Japan's SDG action plan has been integrated with its internationalization strategy. Through their qualitative research in various Japanese universities' internationalization offices, they describe both challenges that faculty and staff members are experiencing as they facilitate various internationalization programs, and opportunities for this sector to evolve in ways that address those challenges – including incorporating more explicit attempts at working toward the SDGs. As a spotlight case, Edwards and Ashida feature Kyoto University's Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies in Human Survivability as both an example of what it looks like to integrate higher education internationalization with efforts to promote the SDGs and as a warning for the kinds of hardships institutions and programs with such intentions can encounter within the current system.
In the following paper, Jon and Yoo (2021) describe higher education internationalization policy trends in the Republic of Korea. They notice three distinct stages of government policy priorities within the modern global wave of internationalization efforts: an initial attempt at a moderate level of controlled outbound mobility, a considerable shift toward ambitious inbound mobility programs with a later addition of regional bidirectional partnerships, and finally, introducing efforts to use internationalization as part of their overall strategy to pursue the SDGs. Jon and Yoo suggest that the third stage they identified is still in its infancy, and that generally speaking the SDGs have been overlooked in discussions about the internationalization of higher education in Korea. However, they point out that this means there is a lot of opportunity to further integrate these two strands of policy. Importantly, Jon and Yoo discuss the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on these processes, recognizing that it has placed extreme limitations on student mobility and has generally created uncertainty around the future of internationalization policies. At the same time, they explain that the pandemic has highlighted the important role HEIs play in addressing local and national issues in ways that draw on broader regional and/or global networks of knowledge sharing (i.e. internationalization in a different way).
In the last paper of this special issue, Khare (2021) reviews India's higher education internationalization trends and strategies. In particular, she highlights the stark disparity between inbound and outbound students, with far greater numbers of Indian students going abroad for higher education than international students choosing to study in India. The concern that she raises is that this imbalance has the potential to cause substantial negative impact on India's economy and that it will likely drive further class divide in Indian society. In response, Khare describes India's attempt to rectify this situation with strategies that focus on “preparing to host” and raising the global reputation of Indian higher education. As she explains, much of these efforts center on issues of quality augmentation and quality assurance mechanisms. Khare summarizes both academic and nonacademic involved in India's pursuit of increased quality in their higher education sector.
Our contributors focus on issues surrounding the current situations of higher education in Asia–Pacific countries and regions in order to monitor the internationalization of higher education and address strategies and practices for monitoring higher education in the Asia–Pacific, in the era of SDGs. Their methodologies are varied, and their findings and implications are also interesting and unique. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted internationalization of higher education significantly, with regard to access to higher education, student mobility, academic exchange, learning and teaching styles, and quality of higher education. We hope that these articles could provide references and raise further discussion for scholars and practitioners to jointly construct and promote internationalization of higher education with equity, quality and resilience in the era of SDGs.
