Title : Initiating the Endeavour 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 inter countries through academic staffs, researchers, and students exchanges as well as through inter-institutions collaborations. This transfer of knowledge and technology spillover did not only significantly influence higher education / university management but also have impacts on the increasing level of industrial and economy productivity in general.
The importance of universities as vehicles for the existence of process stated formerly has required university to design effective internationalization strategies in order to get the advantages from globalization. This paper is aimed to explore internationalization approaches, strategies, and programs, which could be relevantly implemented in developing such as Indonesia, related to 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 shown that in most cases, universities tended to be more focus 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 developed countries. Moreover, in most of the cases, in the developing countries, university also experiences many obstacles in term of organizational preparedness in conducting internationalization policy. It means that the endeavor to conduct internationalization approaches, strategies, and programs that focused only on academic program might not effectively enhance universities’ abilities and exposures in international context as it should be supported by organization readiness in internationalizing its other organizational management issues.
Keywords: Internationalization, higher education institution, Indonesia
