Notes on Academic Internationalisation

Rein RaudTallinn University

What are universities for?

graduates

publications

grants

knowledge

understanding

critical thought

creativity

innovation

✤ “Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.” Richard Luecke and Ralph Katz, Managing Creativity and Innovation, Harvard Business School Press 2003

✤ Innovation is what makes the economy grow and develop in quality as well as competitiveness

In practice, innovation thus understood also

✤increases our use of natural resources and need for energy

✤pollutes the environment

✤alienates people by reducing face-to-face communication

✤creates artificial needs and forces people to adjust to products

✤increases the social gravity of metropolitan areas

So maybe the relations between knowledge and productive practice should also be critically re-evaluated?

What are universities?

structure

buildings

equipment

universitas magistrorum et scholarium

community of teachers and scholars

a meeting place for different minds

an environment for processes to evolve

a repository for the intellectual achievements of the past

Why do universities have to be

international?

export of educational services

creating a pool of recruits for the corporate sector

attracting brains from abroad

an ideology based on domination and

competition

yes, this is very much the way most of the world still functions

but we don’t want to keep it that way, do we?

✤ imagined, because none of their members will ever have met all of the others with whom s/he firmly identifies

✤ communities, because they are joined by the flow of the same information (in the modern age: newspapers and books)

How do nations come into being?

✤ communities are created by all kinds of texts and what we do with them

✤ universities are communities, and ideally parts of a larger community

✤ it is an essential element of their task to enhance the free movement of texts and ways of interpreting them

✤ it is essential that they expose their membership to different ways of seeing things

in the ideal classroom, everybody is a teacher

internationalisation is a key element in the

quality of education and research

What keeps universities from being

international?

Traditional understanding of the study process:

a closed list of subjects

taught in sequence

arranged along the nominal duration of the cycle

students are encapsulated into groups

they become the objects, not the subjects of their education

disrupting the process for the period of exchange creates problems in advancement

knowledge acquired elsewhere does not fit into the structure of studies

Arguments in favour of the traditional process:

“this is how things have always been done”

“otherwise, we cannot guarantee that all graduates know the same things”

employability

“a set of achievements, skills, understandings and personal attributes that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy”

UK’s Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team, 2005

“The more generic the skill, ie the wider its applicability, the more valuable it is in employability terms”

P.Tamkin & J.Hillage, Employability and Employers: the missing piece of the jigsaw, Institute for Employment Studies, 1999

letting the student combine her personal

characteristics with the content of studies - letting her be the

subject of the study process - enhances

employability

What practical conclusions can we draw from all this?

degree structures have to be as liberal as possible

international students have to be integrated into regular university life

foreign language skills are a part of any job description

international experience should be incorporated into the structure of studies

What have we done in Tallinn?

established 2005a little below 10 000 students (33% in graduate programs)538 faculty members

• B2 requirement in a foreign language for all graduates

• all PhD-requiring positions announced internationally

• over 40 bilateral agreements

• over 300 Erasmus agreements

• the only university in Estonia with more incoming than outgoing exchange students

• “friendliness” is a declared value of the university

• all undergraduate programs contain 1/3 of electives and 1/3 free electives

• modules in English to be introduced in all Estonian programs

• students form 20% of all decision-making bodies

www.summerschool.tlu.ee

Thank you for your attention!

...and see you in Tallinn!

rein.raud@tlu.ee