Mutual Internationalization of Higher Education

I thought learning English is my personal choice.  It has nothing to do with the “hidden agenda” from the advanced and civilized West ( Said, 2006).  I chose to learn English, and my initial motivation for learning English is Britney Spears. I wanted to know the meaning of her songs.   Later, I did study for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). It is not fun, but I understood that part.  I was about to go to the United States, an English-speaking country.  Being able to speak English is essential for me to study and live there.  In addition, the TOEFL score is one of the requirements for graduate school admission for students whose native language is not English in many universities in the United States. I still work on my English because if I want to find a faculty job in the future, publications in an internationally well-recognized peer-review journal are necessary. All internationally well-recognized journals in my field are all published in English.   

My personal experiences are just another example to showcase English as the language of power.  Cheng (2019) pointed out that (a) Instead of prompting multilingualism under the internationalization of higher education, English demonstrates its domination in higher education; (b)  English sets the language barriers for scholars from the Global South to present their potentially outstanding research findings in top-tier journals that hold high standards for academic English; ( c)as a result, English, on the one hand, facilitates communications in the international community on the other hand also brings up inequality( Altbach, 2013). What I want to add on is that inequality doesn’t only exist between Global West and East. It is also magnified in the East. For instance, although English is a required college entry exam subject in China, not everyone has the same opportunity to learn English. In the affluent areas,  schools or families can even hire someone who is a native speaker with Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages ( TESOL) certificate to teach English while in rural schools, many k-12 English teachers can not speak English themselves. They play English CDs for students in English class to teach English.  Back then, when I complained about studying for TOEFL, my father always remaindered me that not every Chinese student has the opportunity to take the exam.  I was frustrated by his uncompassionate parenting practices but he actually made a good point.  In 2018, the annual per capita disposable income of rural households in China was 14,617 yuan (i.e., 2085 U.S. dollars), and the same year TOEFL registration fee is 1985 yuan (i.e., 283.24 US dollars). In other words, it would cost more than 1/10 of the family income for someone to take the TOEFL. It is an educational luxury without a doubt to take the TOEFL exam for many Chinese students.

While I am learning English and immersing myself in American culture, I notice one thing very few of my American peers have studied abroad and can speak a foreign language. Just like Cheng points out in her study, the current internationalization of U.S. higher education is a one-way road.  There is an imbalanced flow of student exchange, specifically from non-West countries to the West countries. Although there were 1,095,299, International students, making up 5.5 % of the total U.S. higher education population in the 2018/2019 academic year, there were only 341, 751 U.S students who participated in the study abroad programs for academic credit.  Also, it needs to be pointed out that European countries, instead of non-West countries, were the most popular destinations for U.S.students. 54.9 % of study abroad U.S students went to the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany (Institute of International Education, 2019).

One question that is worth exploring is why the U.S students are not interested in studying in non-Western countries?  Said’s theory of Post-colonialism may shed some light on the question. The non-West countries are viewed as primitive or uncivilized “other,” while the Western countries are considered as advanced and civilized places. The west-east division is still existent and expanding in globalization. As s result, the non-western language, value, and culture are ignored. Following this line, it is not surprising that the U.S students don’t want to go to study languages and cultures that are not valuable to their home culture.  Languages and cultural barriers can be another reason. Most American students can not speak a foreign language.  It would be challenging for them to study and travel in eastern countries where a small portion of the population masters English. Third, racism and nationalism might influence students’ choices too.

In general, there is still a long way to go to achieve the equality of internationalization of higher education. People all over the world should realize that,  love it or hate it; globalization is unavoidable. The coronavirus pandemic is a very unfortunate example of the unstoppable internationalization trend. Maybe it is time to thrive to mutual understanding, play like a team to reach the sustainable development goals,  and enrich our lives by learning and experiencing different cultures and languages.

References

Altbach, Philip G. (2013). The International Imperative in Higher Education. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Cheng, A. O. Y. (2019). Global Mission – “Glocal” Internationalization. Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education, 11(Spring), 41–51. doi: 10.32674/jcihe.v11ispring.929

Said, Edward. W. (2006). “Orientalism,” in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 7-91. New York, NY: Routledge.

Institute of International Education. 2019. Number of International Students in the United States Hits All-Time High. March 15, 2020. https://www.iie.org/en/Why-IIE/Announcements/2019/11/Number-of-International-Students-in-the-United-States-Hits-All-Time-High