Sociální pedagogika | Social Education

ISSN 1805-8825

E: editorsoced@fhs.utb.cz

W: http://www.soced.cz

Internationalisation in higher education for society

– IHES in the times of corona

Uwe Brandenburg

To cite this article: Brandenburg, U. (2020). Internationalisation in higher education

for society – IHES in the times of corona. Sociální pedagogika/Social Education, 8(1),

11–24. https://doi.org/10.7441/soced.2020.08.01.01

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.7441/soced.2020.08.01.01

Published online: 15 April 2020

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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).

Copyright © 2020 by the author and publisher, TBU in Zlín.

Sociální pedagogika | Social Education

11

volume 8, issue 1, pp. 11–24, April 2020

https://doi.org/10.7441/soced.2020.08.01.01

ISSN 1805-8825

Internationalisation in higher education for society

– IHES in the times of corona

Uwe Brandenburg

Abstract: Internationalisation has so far been largely

disconnected from major societal developments such as the

rise of xenophobia, climate change or more recently the

Corona crisis and research on internationalisation for society is

scarce. The article provides the definition of such

internationalisation in higher education for society (IHES) as

well as its characteristics developed in a mapping study for the

German Academic Exchange Service and describes examples of

IHES activities in universities around the world. The author

shows, that IHES as a special form of Internationalisation at

Home (IaH) is still in its infant state, in contrast to classical

internationalisation. The article then connects IHES with the

most important societal challenge of our time: Corona,

outlining different kinds of IHES activities that could be

developed to help people during the Corona crisis. In a final

excursion, the current movement towards online education as

Contact

an answer to the Corona crisis is reflected upon from an IHES

Global Impact Institute s.r.o.

perspectives and possible applications are suggested.

Dělnicka 213/12

170 00 Prague

Keywords: IHES, internationalisation, corona, society, impact

Internacionalizace ve vyšším vzdělávání

pro společnost – IHES v době koronaviru

Abstrakt: Internacionalizace je zatím ve velké míře odpojena od

zásadních aspektů společenského vývoje, jako je zvyšující se

xenofobie, klimatické změny nebo v poslední době i krize okolo

koronaviru. Výzkumy internacionalizace pro společnost se

přitom provádí jen velmi zřídka. Tento článek poskytuje definici

takovéto

internacionalizace

ve

vyšším

vzdělávání

pro společnost (IHES) i její vlastnosti odhalené v mapovací

studii pro Německé služby akademické výměny a popisuje

příklady aktivit IHES na univerzitách v různých částech světa.

Correspondence:

Autor ukazuje, že IHES jako speciální forma domácí

uwe.brandenburg@globalimpacti

internacionalizace (Internationalisation at Home – IaH) je

nstitute.eu

v porovnání s klasickou internacionalizací stále ještě

v plenkách. Článek spojuje IHES s nejvýznamnější společenskou

Copyright © 2020 by the author

výzvou naší doby – koronavirem – a načrtává různé druhy

and publisher, TBU in Zlín.

aktivit IHES, které by mohly být na pomoc lidem během

This work is licensed under the

koronavirové krize vyvinuty. V závěrečném zhodnocení

Creative Commons Attribution

International License (CC BY).

problematiky je provedena reflexe aktuálního posunu směrem

k online vzdělávání jako odpovědi na koronavirovou krizi

z perspektivy IHES a jsou navržena možná využití.

12

Brandenburg / Internationalisation in higher education for society…

Klíčová slova: IHES, internacionalizace, korona, společnost,

dopad

1

Why is internationalisation in higher education for society (IHES)

relevant?

The last decade has seen a substantial increase in various larger societal phenomena. Xenophobia

and radicalisation have increased in the 20 years since the Durban Declaration in 2001

(United Nations, 2001), as the United Nations announced in 2016 (United Nations, 2016). At the same time, we see increasing anti-intellectualism (Gardner, 2016), while populism continues to raise its head all around the world (Roth, 2017). Beyond these social issues, we can observe the immense

challenge to humanity and the entire planet in the form of climate change.

All of these and many more aspects are widely discussed in both academic and lay circles online and

offline, with perspectives exchanged and actions taken. Interestingly though, the world of

internationalisation in higher education has mainly abstained from engaging with these phenomena,

especially during the last two decades. In the first mapping study for the German Academic Exchange

Service (DAAD),Brandenburg, de Wit, Jones, Leask, and Drobner (2020) show that research on the

idea of internationalisation in higher education for society (IHES) was practically non-existent, with

very few exceptions including Brandenburg and Willcock (2019) and Streitwieser, Loo, Ohorodnik, and

Jeong (2018). They also show that the identifiable initiatives were mainly individual and scarce, showing that IHES, in contrast to HE internationalisation as such, is still pretty much in its infant state.

However, the study also indicates the immense potential of IHES in contributing to solutions of major

social problems.

Most recently, the COVID-19 crisis, which started in January 2020 and reached truly pandemic status

in February/March 2020, is an example for the relevance of IHES, with regard to both social

responsibility and social engagement. Although no reliable data is available at the time of this article,

it is statistically likely that international student, staff and conference mobility will have had its share

in spreading the virus. Therefore, internationalisation carries a social responsibility for the

consequences. On the other hand, the immense efforts in international joint research shows how

internationalisation can also help to solve the crisis. And yet, so far there are very few initiatives in

internationalisation engaging beyond the traditional target groups (students and staff).

This lack of focus on larger societal problems in internationalisation in higher education was raised

for the first time by Brandenburg, de Wit, Jones, and Leask (2019a). They argue that in contrast to

community outreach, social responsibility, social engagement and concepts such as service learning,

which have been present in higher education around the world for decades, internationalisation

activities have so far been mainly concerned with the higher education community itself, and the

social responsibility aspect has remained largely neglected in terms of systemic thinking and

conceptualisation. They further state that this is a severe imbalance which can no longer be ignored

since higher education institutions (HEIs) have – in the “Rousseauian” sense – a social contract with

society and therefore bear some responsibility for it.

Based on widely accepted definitions of internationalisation (de Wit, Hunter, Rumbley, Howard,

& Egron-Pollak, 2015) and social engagement (Benneworth et al., 2018), they generate the term

“internationalisation in higher education for society (IHES)” and define it as follows in a UWN blog:

Internationalisation in higher education for society (IHES) explicitly aims to benefit the wider

community, at home or abroad, through international or intercultural education, research,

service and engagement.

(Brandenburg, de Wit, Jones, & Leask, 2019b)

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Brandenburg / Internationalisation in higher education for society…

2

Why should HE internationalisation engage with society?

There are various arguments for universities to engage with society through internationalisation in

higher education. First and foremost, internationalisation is just one of the instruments universities

apply, and it therefore has to also serve the three main foci of universities: education/teaching,

research, and social engagement as the third mission. Second, universities have become increasingly

involved in addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN, e.g. through the

University Social Responsibility Network (USRN) consisting of 16 HEIs from 11 countries

(Chan, Hollister, Iiyoshi, & Lloyd, 2020). Third, internationalisation generates substantial CO2

footprints: according to de Wit and Altbach (2020a), global student mobility produced CO2 equivalent

to that of the entire countries of Croatia or Tunisia as early as 2014. In addition, the large international

education conferences as well as numerous scientific conferences add considerably to this CO2

footprint of internationalisation. The University of California at Santa Barbara alone estimates that

33% of its carbon footprint was produced by air travel to international conferences and meetings

(Levine et al., 2019).

In addition, IHES is becoming more important due to various developments in internationalisation,

which the study outlines in detail:

1. From individual activities (late 80s) to systematic institutionalised comprehensive

internationalisation.

2. From individual “nice-to-have” mobility experience to educating Global Citizens.1

3. The convergence of the concepts of internationalisation at home (IaH) and internationalisation

of the curriculum (IoC).

4. From living on myths to fact-based accountability or … from input to output, outcome and

impact.

5. From Anglo-Western and European-centred internationalisation to a truly global approach and

regional self-confidence.

(Brandenburg et al., 2020, pp.15–18)

3

What precisely is IHES?

IHES is closely connected to the realm of social engagement in HE. Brandenburg et al. (2020)

extensively explored current research on social engagement and its definitions, with the main finding

that, so far, social engagement is seen to be in competition with internationalisation for resources

and priorities, rather than complementary to it (Benneworth et al., 2018). However, Brandenburg et

al. (2020) conclusively argue that IHES is located precisely in the area of overlap between

internationalisation and social engagement (see Figure 1).

1 The concept and definition of a “global citizen” is widely debated. Olds (2012) gives a good overview and provides five different perspectives: Global citizenship as a choice and a way of thinking, global citizenship as

self-awareness and awareness of others, global citizenship as they practice cultural empathy, global

citizenship as the cultivation of principled decision-making, and global citizenship as participation in the social

and political life of one's community.

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Brandenburg / Internationalisation in higher education for society…

Figure 1 IHES located between internationalisation and social engagement

(Brandenburg et al., 2020, p. 19)

However, so far IHES is less developed than internationalisation. This can be best illustrated

by applying the four stages of institutionalisation according to New Institutionalism (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 Comparing states of Institutionalisation between Internationalisation and IHES

(Brandenburg et al., 2020, p. 23)

In many parts of the world, internationalisation itself has already settled in the most advanced level

of sedimentation; however, within regions and even countries we can also find differences between

HEIs regarding the state of internationalisation (for both, see Rumbley & Sandström, 2019). On the

other hand, IHES is everywhere still in the very first stage of innovation (Brandenburg et al., 2020).

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Brandenburg / Internationalisation in higher education for society…

4

What makes an internationalisation activity an IHES activity?

The IHES definition as stated above implies three major characteristics of an IHES activity. First, it has

to be explicit about its goal to benefit the wider public. This means that the target group of an IHES

activity has to be, first and foremost, placed outside the university. In this way, unintended side

effects of usual internationalisation, such as assumed influences on families and friends by returning

exchange students or accidental interactions with local people during study abroad, are not

considered IHES. This is one of the most important characteristics because it avoids the risk that every

HEI claims to do IHES because “something for sure happens just by accident during normal

internationalisation activities”. IHES projects, in contrast, need to explicitly focus on a target group

outside the HE community. By analysing 20 IHES examples from HEIs and 6 from meta-level

organisations (British Council and DAAD) – Brandenburg et al. (2020) developed the following list of

such possible target groups (see Figure 3).

Figure 3 Share of projects including certain groups of actors

(Brandenburg et al., 2020, p. 54)

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The results are not necessarily what one would expect – even if we have to take into account that the

study does not aim to be representative. The most dominant target groups found in the IHES projects

were the general public, youth and municipalities, while refugees only came in at 4th place and school

pupils and parents seemed to be infrequently targeted.

The second characteristic is that IHES can happen at home, in the sense of internationalisation at

home (IaH), abroad, and also online; however, examples of online-based IHES have yet to be found,

so far. The latter might play an increasing role in the future, not least due to the coronavirus crisis in

2020 (see below).

The third characteristic states that IHES projects can occur in any aspect of an HEI where

internationalisation takes place: education, research, service and social engagement.

To precisely understand what an IHES project really is, what its characteristics are and how one can

place one’s own projects within the greater context, we can use the complex IHES matrix that

Brandenburg et al. (2020) developed. Besides the already mentioned target groups, they identify 6 other IHES dimensions with different numbers of individual items and outline the frequencies with

which those items appear in the 26 examples (20 from HEIs and 6 on a meta-level). The first dimension

is IHES goals (see Table 1), and they differentiate them into three major categories: public goods,

economic development and social justice.

Table 1

IHES goals (Brandenburg et al., 2020, p. 43)

Public Good

Support social integration

Support/preserve democracy

Support/preserve peace

Fight xenophobia/populism

Fight radicalisation

Support European identity

Support the Sustainable Development Goals on the UN

Develop global citizens

Support the environment & sustainability

Improve the acceptance of scientific results (instead of alternative facts)

and critical thinking

Support science and knowledge diplomacy/soft power

Provide practice oriented research

Economic Development

Support local/regional economy

Support economies of developing countries

Knowledge transfer

Social Justice

General education of the public/capacity building

Support active citizenship

The top 3 goals appearing in most projects were “General education of the public/capacity building,”

Support social integration” and “Develop global citizens.”

The next dimension is the actor groups within the HEI. This seems to be a very crucial dimension since

it moves students, for example, from their usual category of “beneficiary” or “recipient of a service”

to that of an actor providing services to others. It contains 11 groups: leadership of the HEI; domestic

and international academics and administrative staff employed by the HEI; incoming international

academics and administrative staff; domestic, international exchange and international degree

students; and alumni (Brandenburg et al., 2020). Among these groups, the most prominent ones in

the analysed examples were domestic administrative and academic staff, as well as international

students.

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Brandenburg / Internationalisation in higher education for society…

Next is the dimension of internationalisation, with the most comprehensive aspect being the

following 19 items (see Figure 4).

Figure 4 Share of projects incorporating certain dimensions of internationalisation (%)

(Brandenburg et al., 2020, p. 55)

Two items show particular frequency: internationalisation at home (IaH) and inbound student

mobility. The latter can be considered a precondition for the first. So indeed, IHES seems to be a

perfect tool for IaH, which can reach 90% of the non-mobile students, and considers them not only

passive recipients but actors involved in the activity themselves, e.g. by matching them with returning

mobile students or incoming international students in activities for the wider public.

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The other three dimensions have much more of a filter character, with few items. The involvement

at the HEI differentiates between holistic (entire HEI), partial (only selected chairs / departments

/ units) and individual (single actors) involvement, and the analysis shows that in two-thirds of the

cases, partial involvement can be observed. Movement between the HEI and society is an important

dimension since it analyses whether the HEI moves into society to deliver IHES, or whether it brings

society onto campus. Here we see a split, in that slightly more than 40% of the cases show both

movements at the same time, while a similar percentage focuses on movements from the HEI into

society. The last dimension asks for the prime beneficiary of an IHES activity. Since HEIs cannot be

assumed to act entirely altruistically, the question is whether the prime beneficiary shall be society

or whether they pursue a “mutual benefit” approach. Not surprisingly, 88.5% of all projects pursue

an approach of mutual benefit. This also seems wise, since it ensures a strong interest from the HEI

as the actor in continuing its engagement.

5

What is the scope of IHES projects?

What the study mainly teaches us, in that part, is the enormous diversity of already existing projects,

and consequently the vast opportunities that lie within the IHES concept. Brandenburg et al. (2020)

group the 20 HEI examples into five categories:

1. Refugee support projects.

2. IHES to support the regional economy.

3. IHES projects pursuing the goal of public goods in local communities.

4. IHES abroad.

5. IHES as a holistic concept.

These five categories are not necessarily all mutually exclusive, but it is striking that most of the

identified projects fall into the category of IaH (no.1-3 and also 5), while the holistic projects cover

both mobility and IaH. This will be highly relevant in the corona context later on.

Here, I want to outline one example per category to show the breadth and depth that IHES can take.

Among the refugee projects the most outstanding seems to be Kiron University (headquarters in

Berlin, two branch campuses in Beirut and Amman). It has been in existence since 2015 and has so

far provided higher education for more than 6,000 refugees. According to the self-description

provided for the DAAD study, Kiron is “not only supporting the fourth UN Sustainable Development

Goal by enabling access to inclusive and quality education, its platform is continuously developing

EdTech solutions for underserved communities” (Brandenburg et al., 2020, p. 58).

A striking example of an IHES project helping the local or regional economy is the Welcome Centre at

the Georg-August University in Göttingen. The university already had a welcome centre for scientists

for many years when regional industry approached the university with a problem: while the economy

in the region was booming, it lacked a qualified workforce (Southern Lower Saxony is a relatively

scarcely populated area). Attracting international workers was the only solution, but the industry

faced two major problems: the region was not well-known, and the companies lacked the capacities

and abilities to provide services to those workers to motivate them to come, and especially to stay,

in the region. Since the university had established their welcome centre for very similar reasons, a

joint venture was started, creating various welcome centres in the region built on the model and

trained by the welcome centre of the university. The project was so successful that after a project

funding phase, it is now working based on fees paid by the companies (Brandenburg et al., 2020,

p. 61).

Relatively many projects could be detected that pursue the goal of providing public goods to local

communities. Koç University in Turkey, for example, coordinates – in cooperation with Universidade

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Aberta (Portugal), University of Bologna (Italy), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands),

Gaziantep University (Turkey) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany) – an Erasmus+ project

called “Peacemakers”. In their self-description they state that it “aims to foster a more peaceful

generation in Europe and in Turkey that approaches migrants with positive attitudes. It will aim to

achieve this objective by developing the problem-solving, critical-thinking and collaborative working

skills of the participants through rigorous academic preparation, experiential education and

leadership development. It aims to provide students with the education, training, and experiences

needed to better understand, negotiate and resolve conflicts, in order to have more positive attitudes

towards migrants. Skills, such as the students’ ability to change their attitudes, will develop in this

project, and are critical for their social life, workplace attitudes and all other mediums of exposure to

people from diverse cultures. This project will enhance social, civic and intellectual competencies

recognized as effective tools to prevent and tackle discrimination, radicalism, and racism. Core

elements are boot camps and online courses, such as the train-the-trainers modules, in which

students are taught to become trainers to teach both other students and non-HE audiences about the

skills and knowledge needed to become peacemakers, so called ‘Peace Envoys’” (Brandenburg et al.,

2020, p. 65).

IHES can also use the format of mobility, bringing a university’s own students and/or staff to a

community abroad, very much in the sense of service learning abroad. LaTrobe University, for

example, has been running the Capacity Building Speech Pathology and Audiology project in

Cambodia since 2015. It brings speech pathology and audiology students in their clinical placement

phase to Cambodia, where they work closely with NGOs and provide both speech and hearing support

services, especially to poor communities in rural areas. This project not only helps the local

communities but, in my view, is also an excellent example of how IHES can benefit the actor groups

(in this case the students from LaTrobe) by exposing them to communities in real need, and providing

them with a perspective beyond the usually well-cushioned and low-risk, limited-problem society that

they will later work in.

Holistic IHES concepts, as the final category, are still scarce, which is in line with the findings with

regard to the innovation status of IHES itself. EARTH University in Costa Rica is one of the very few

that takes IHES practically as the basis for its existence. It combines concepts of sustainability with

wider participation and internationalisation in a completely immersed model. EARTH university

integrates such concepts both in Costa Rica – bringing global expertise to the country – and in the

home country of the graduates (the majority of students come from abroad, mainly from developing

countries). As the self-description states: “Since its creation, EARTH has been an international

university with students from underprivileged rural communities in developing countries, with an

international faculty, an international internship program, and a global impact. EARTH’s mission is to

prepare ethical leaders, agents of change, who will contribute to sustainable development and

construct a prosperous and just society. It is evident that this mission is relevant for people from all

over the world. EARTH measures its success by the success of its graduates in improving the quality

of life in their communities and countries. Improving the quality of life goes beyond economic justice

and prosperity; it also means caring for the environment, and promoting constructive citizenship and

positive values. EARTH also measures success by the impact of the outreach and research that it

applies to solving the very real problems confronting the people in the communities and countries it

serves. EARTH’s dream is that its graduates, through their actions and EARTH’s own activities in

education, research and outreach, will play a significant role in bringing peace, helping to eradicate

poverty, improving democracy, and creating a world that shares the universal values of honesty,

respect and tolerance” (Brandenburg et al., 2020, p. 71). It seems hard to imagine a university with a

strategic setup that provides a better full-scale IHES example than EARTH university.

There are also examples beyond this study: Kostrykina (in press) from the University of Auckland compares two approaches to IHES (New Zealand and Indonesia) to be presented at the IHES

conference 2020 in Prague at the end of 2020. Drawing on case studies of internationalisation practice

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Brandenburg / Internationalisation in higher education for society…

in New Zealand and Indonesia, she discusses the notions of social license and IHES. In the context of

New Zealand, social licence involves resolving the challenges of pastoral care, student experience,

and engaging the public with an internationalisation mind-set. The understanding of social licence in

Indonesia is quite different. It is primarily based on the concepts of public goods, including benefitting

the poor, community service, public dedication and public welfare, as well as addressing post-colonial

issues. The notion of social licence is conceptualised in the context of the competing neoliberal and

social development agendas, encouraged by governments and supported by the HEIS in New Zealand

and Indonesia. Furthermore, Kostrykina (in press) outlines several mechanisms of constructing social

licence as a part of the national internationalisation strategy, as well as their purposes and outcomes,

and also locates the notion of social licence and the concept of IHES within a broader context of the

global international education industry and the emerging global knowledge economy.

Another example of IaH as a form of IHES are the welcoming weeks at the Poznan University of

Medical Sciences and Poznan University of Technology. Foreign students are often welcomed at a

university during orientation days/week. This is an opportunity to not only show students the campus

and familiarize them with administrative procedures at the university, but also to immerse them in

local culture and society, and get them acquainted with domestic customs and traditions. Polish

universities use these weeks to interact with the local population, as a way to reduce xenophobic

attitudes. This program helps “cushion” unpleasant situations, which contradict the self-image of the

city of Poznan as an open city that welcomes everyone regardless of their race, nationality or religion.

6

What is the relevance of IHES in a world of corona?

When this special issue was planned, corona was only a distant problem in China. In the last few weeks

it has become the defining aspect of life across the globe. This makes it a core IHES issue. So how does

the corona crisis affect our idea of IHES, and what might IHES mean in the context of the crisis?

First of all, corona is a serious issue for internationalisation in general: logically, with international

students and scholars having returned home and mobility made problematic for months, maybe a

year, the practical concepts for IHES in terms of IaH are severely limited, if we focus on real person

engagement. However, domestic students, staff and scholars with international experience are still

there and can, once quarantines and lockdowns have become a thing of the past, engage with the

local community. In the times of corona, this is needed more than ever! Corona will support populist

thinking, a herd mentality and ideas of separatism (similar to the US position in the first half of the

20th century) – in short, “us vs. them”. People will become even more concerned about “the other”,

and this is where IHES can play an important societal role by educating the general public.

Brandenburg and Willcock (2019) have proven through an experimental design that this works.

I would like to outline three examples of possible IHES projects that would address the corona crisis:

a. IHES as a way to help deal with quarantine: this is already happening, as the Erasmus+ WILLIAM

project on IaH in Israel is right now developing tools and guidelines for parents and students

around the globe, based on the knowledge and expertise of the Community Stress Prevention

Centre and led by a professor of one of the WILLIAM partners, Tel Hai College. Materials are –

as we write this – being translated into various languages by European and Israeli experts, in

order to share knowledge and, above all, to help parents (one of the target groups of IHES

activities) feel safer and more competent in dealing with this situation.2 This kind of project

addresses target groups such as the general public, pupils, parents, communities and

municipalities. It could involve actor groups such as domestic and international students and

staff and would mainly address the goal areas “public goods” and “social justice”.

2 You can follow the developments on https://william-erasmus.com/category/coping-with-covid-19/

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b. IHES to help stranded foreigners: hundreds of thousands of people are stranded abroad due to

closing borders. Most do not have any contact persons and are not in higher education.

Universities, however, now have experience with both getting people home and supporting

those stranded on their campuses. This knowledge can be activated to help the non-HE

foreigners. For this clearly defined IHES target group, different actor groups could be involved:

domestic academics, students and not only administrative staff who might already have helped

their international colleagues stranded on campus, as well as the international staff and

students who have their own experiences to bring in. Again, the main goal areas would be

“public goods” and “social justice”.

c. IHES to fight corona-induced xenophobia: As Aguilera (2020) states, “xenophobia is a pre-

existing condition” which is further exacerbated due to corona. Xenophobia lives on fear of the

unknown, and if people feel their life is in danger due to “foreigners” travelling, it spreads. IHES

can help here by, for example, organizing online webinars and meetings in which people who

are home alone, afraid and insecure, can meet with other people in other countries sharing the

same fears. The actor groups in universities could be academics, students and administrators,

who provide the platforms and also translate to their home communities what is being said on

the other side.

7

How can IHES be realized in a virtual world induced by corona?

Corona is increasingly forcing universities into online education. de Wit and Altbach (2020b) started

an interesting debate on COVID-19 and the consequences or lessons learned for internationalisation.

However, they do not expect severe impacts because they assume that online mobility will remain a

peripheral aspect, not yet ready to take over, mainly due to its still quite rudimentary technological

state. Mobility will probably see a dip in the next 1-2 years but then return to normal, and that degree

mobility will continue because of the sheer dependence on fee-paying students in many countries.

While I would concur with the notion that the human being is mainly a creature of habit and has a

short memory, so that things might get back to normal to some extent regarding mobility and

especially degree mobility, I tend to disagree with regard to the impact of technology.

Many HEIs had to literally move overnight to online teaching, counselling or lecturing. I am rather

confident that corona will change internationalisation permanently with regard to virtual mobility and

online education, a view supported by Politico in a fascinating article showcasing 34 eminent experts

and their views on how corona will change the landscape (Politico Magazine, 2020). While many teachers will probably want to move back to classroom education as quickly as possible, many more

will also discover the benefits of online education. Moreover, crisis creates innovation, and we can

expect to see substantial improvements in the online environment: take the current debate on

“zoombombing”, for example, and the call for improvements in the security of online teaching

environments (Redden, 2020). Therefore, I predict:

a. Tech solutions will see quantum leaps in quality over the next 12 months and beyond, moving

fast in the direction of true virtual reality environments.

b. These solutions to IaH will be much more acceptable to staff and students in the future since

they have become used to it.

c. Due to the massive innovation in the field, the basic options will become more and more

affordable. Even today, using platforms such as zoom produces costs that are a fraction of what

needed to be invested only a few years ago.

d. While mobility will most likely need up to five years to get back to the status quo, as Simon

Marginson estimates (Mitchell, 2020), HEIs will redirect sum budgets towards IaH and online

mobility concepts.

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Building on this development, the next big step in internationalisation will be virtual reality (VR). Due

to the extremely rapid technological development, especially in the area of VR environments, I expect

within the next five years a quantum leap away from the currently slow, boring and not very engaging

platforms (such as clumsy videochats, blackboards and shared folders) and opportunities towards a

full-immersion concept, including true visual and haptic experiences with full-fledged avatars. If we

just take the development in the gaming industry as the relevant indicator, VR environments will

develop at a rate that we cannot even fathom at this stage. And then the implications for

internationalisation will be huge. Once the artificial boundary between the human and the content

(which at this point has to be accessed through a screen, and the interaction is keyboard-based)

disappears, and the quality of imaging improves one to two levels, the difference between real and

virtual reality will get blurred overnight. This will affect both mobility, for study and research, and

conference participation, and it will also provide the first real opportunity to interest the 90% of

students who are immobile to go abroad, albeit in a virtual way.

This development also produces an entirely new opportunity for IHES. Imagine IHES centres in which

regular citizens in Spain or Portugal can go into a virtual room, are transported beyond any border

towards China or Korea, and are immersed in a concrete, haptic, acoustic and visual experience in a

different country that can open their mind? Or that nurses in Bangladesh or Germany can enter such

a room, find themselves in a teaching hospital in Stockholm or Mombasa, interact with their

colleagues, and improve their knowledge? All this can happen without extra expenses, without any

relevant CO2 footprint (virtual mobility is not a zero- CO2 activity!) and without having to arrange for

family or work responsibilities. In this way, VR-IHES can achieve three major goals:

-

Successfully address the problem of climate change by substantially reducing the CO2 footprint

of internationalisation.

-

Move far beyond the classical minority of individuals benefitting thus far from

internationalisation in two categories, by engaging the 90% of the non-mobile students and,

among those, especially the economically disadvantaged, in the sense of true widening

participation.

-

Involve a much larger proportion of local non-HE target groups (such as the general public,

pupils and parents) in an even more impactful way by transporting them into a new

environment without risks and costs.

And who knows: maybe such virtual experiences will then also motivate more people to take up

studies, and more students to finally go abroad in a real mobility.

As always, a crisis can also be a huge opportunity, and change usually only happens under external

pressure.

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Uwe Brandenburg holds a PhD from the University of Bristol in

Globalisation Studies, an MscEcon from the University of Wales at

Swansea and an M.A. in Islamic Sciences from the WWU Münster. He is

currently the Managing Director of the Global Impact Institute in Prague

and Associate Professor for Regional Cooperation and Impact of Higher

Education at the University Rovira I Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. Prior to that

he was Managing Partner of CHE Consult and CHE Consult Prague. He was

also Director International at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for eight

years. Uwe has published widely on the topic of internationalization such

as the much debated article with Hans de Wit on the end of

internationalization in 2011 in the Boston IHE. He was the head author and

team leader for both the Erasmus Impact Study (EIS, 2014) and the follow-

up EIS Regional Analysis (EIS RA, 2016), the European Voluntary Service

Impact Study (2017). He frequently presents on international conferences

around the globe. He also frequently coaches individuals in leadership

positions, teaches at different universities and conducts research. Uwe

currently focuses his work on impact and Internationalisation in Higher

Education for Society (IHES). Uwe gave a TEDx talk on the Magic of Change

in March 2019 which is also on his youtube channel. Uwe is a fervent

believer in the value of change based on his personal experience as well

as professional and academic insights. His research interests are

internationalisation for society, the influence of technological

developments on internationalisation and the assessment of impact.

Table of Contents

(United Nations, 2001),

(Gardner, 2016),

(Benneworth et al., 2018),