Page 2 - Brandenburg and de Wit-EH final-2

INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION, Number 62 Winter 2011

Pages 15-17

The End of Internationalization

Uwe Brandenburg and Hans de Wit

Uwe Brandenburg is project manager at the Centre for Higher Education

Development. E-mail: Uwe.Brandenburg@che-consult.de. Hans de Wit is

professor of internationalization at the School of Economics and Management,

Hogeschool van Amsterdam, University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands. E-

mail: j.w.m.de.wit@ hva.nl.

Over the last two decades, the concept of the internationalization of higher

education has moved from the fringe of institutional interest to the very core. In

the late 1970s up to the mid-1980s, activities that could be described as

internationalization were usually neither named that way, nor carried high

prestige, and were rather isolated and unrelated. The exception was joint

international research, which, however, has never seriously become part of the

internationalization fashion. In the late 1980s, changes occurred:

Internationalization was invented and carried on, ever increasing its importance.

In the past two decades, new components were added to its multidimensional

body, moving from simple exchange of students to the big business of

recruitment and from activities impacting on an incredibly small elite group to a

mass phenomenon. In our view, it is time for a critical reflection on the changing

concept of internationalization.