Title : Initiating the Endeavor for Internationalization of Education in Indonesia: Proposing a Framework
Author(s) : Unggul Heriqbaldi, Basuki, & Dian Ekowati
ABSTRACT
Marginson and Van Der Wende (2007) stated in their OECD paper that “Economic and cultural globalization has ushered in a new era in higher education. Higher education was always more internationally open than most sectors because of its immersion in knowledge, which never showed much respect for juridical boundaries. In global knowledge economies, higher education institutions are more important than ever as mediums for a wide range of cross-border relationships and continuous global flows of people, information, knowledge, technologies, products, and financial capital”. It can be seen that globalization has made it possible for rapid transfer of knowledge and technology spillover between countries through academic staffs, researchers, and students exchanges as well as through inter-institutions collaborations. This transfer of knowledge and technology spillover does not only significantly influence higher education / university management but also has impacts on the increasing level of industrial and economic productivity in general.
The importance of universities as vehicles for the existence of process stated previously has required universities to design effective internationalization strategies in order to get the advantages from globalization. This paper is aimed at exploring internationalization approaches, strategies, and programs, which could be relevantly implemented in developing such as Indonesia, related to the nation's policy on higher education.
Study has shown that university's readiness to play roles and take advantages from globalization was determined by both academic program preparedness and organizational or managerial preparedness. This study also showed that in most cases, universities tend to be more focused on academic aspects than professional organizational management aspects. This condition could be understood as there were perceptions that academic quality and other academic related aspects of education institutions in developing countries were not as good as those of education institutions in developing countries. Moreover, in most of the cases, in the developing countries, universities also experience many obstacles in terms of organizational preparedness in conducting internationalization policy. It means that the effort to conduct internationalization approaches, strategies, and programs that focus only on academic programs might not effectively enhance universities' abilities and exposure in international context as it should be supported by organization readiness in internationalizing its other organizational management issues.
Keywords: Internationalization, higher education institutions, Indonesia
