Irina V. Alyoshina
State University of Management, Russia
ABSTRACT
Globalization of business environment, technologization of learning and massification of higher education are among the most serious challenges for business education. Contemporary university pretends to be the leading institution in information society as soon as it produces and transmits a huge amount of society’s new information.
Traditional brick and mortar universities are under risk of loosing their positions to competiting entities unless they internationalize their activity and consider massification trend in higher education. Internationalization of curriculum is seen in context of such questions as the degree of internationalization and customization of educational product.
GLOBALIZATION AND INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CURRICULUM AND CONTENT
Contemporary knowledge society depends on knowledge-based economy. Higher Education today is perceived as a knowledge industry and higher education institutions can be seen as service providers at the globalizing markets.
Globalization has been one of the most debated topics over the past few years. According to the World Bank,
“Globalization – the growing integration of economies and societies around the world”
(http://youthink.worldbank.org/issues/globalization). Globalization can be understood as the process of increasing convergence and interdependence of economies and liberalization of trade and markets (Thune and Welle-Strand , 2005). Globalization can be regarded as an obtaining by the events and processes the worldwide scale. As Ahlawat, S and Ahlawat, S.S. (2006) stress, the ongoing shift toward economic globalization continues to raise questions about what intellectual capabilities, technical skills, and ethical sensibilities will best serve college graduates and enable them to best serve society.
In an era of increasing globalization the trend toward international accreditation for business schools means that the curricula worldwide are becoming increasingly compatible. ‘Many graduates of business schools, even when employed in their home country, are employed by international firms‘ (Rundle-Thiele et al, 2005). So internationalization of higher education is essential to allow for the effective international mobility of the international work force.
Globalization and internationalization are interrelated. The concept ‘internationalization’ refers more to the process of increasing cooperation between states or to activities across state borders, but reflects a world order in which nation states still play a central role (Thune and Welle-Strand, 2005). Globalization can be seen as a catalyst for internationalization of higher education. The basic reason for internationalization of higher education is the emergence and growth of a global information/knowledge-based economy. At the same time, the emergence and growth of an international labor market for highly skilled professionals is important.
According to Windham (1996), the increasing importance of internationalization in higher education has become clear for both the institutions themselves and national governments. International treaties and or-ganizations—such as the EU, ASEAN, NAFTA, APEK promote the internationalization of higher education (Scott, 2006). Internationalization is today a central concern of higher education institutions, and first of all for business schools. Business and administration programs are among the mostly preferred programs for international students.
And business schools have a large share in the international market of educational services.
Internationalization of higher education has been traditionally seen as a cooperative activity on international exchange programs for students and professors. Internationalization is a strategy of expansion of higher education ideas across national boundaries. Porter has defined internationalization as ‘a process by which teaching, research and service functions of a higher education system become internationally and cross-culturally compatible’ (Porter 1990:78). At the same time, international competition is seen as an emerging rationale for internationalization (Wende, 2001). Reshaping higher education systems in the light of the construction of a European Higher Education Area is at the heart of current debates, initiatives and reforms that proliferate across Europe (Papatsiba, 2006). According to Papatsiba, European educational system faces such challenges as ‘new demands involving contradictory expectations for equity and access on the one hand, and excellence on the other, and this, in a context of diversification of funding and decrease of public funding, globalization and knowledge society, quality assurance and accountability, entrepreneurial approaches, information-communication technologies and virtual universities, new providers and marketable knowledge, and finally competition for income from foreign students’. Bologna process can be seen as a factor of integrating and convergence, harmonization of diverse European higher educational systems in order to increase Europe integration and competitiveness. Russia participates in Bologna process too. However today, in an age of globalization, Europeanization doesn’t seem to exhaust all competitiveness factors for Russian universities and especially for business education. Global, not only European, dimension for further development seems to be more rational and productive for Russia’s business education..
Internationalization of higher education traditionally incorporates geographic mobility of students and of professors, program franchising and development of subsidiary institutions abroad, trans-national distance education. However today this can be seen as not enough. As soon as only minority of all students now are able to travel abroad or to complete international program. We see the increasing globalization of business environment, international outsourcing and intensive technology development. That means that almost all graduates are expected to be involved in international value-creation chain anyway. Some of them are supposed to be busy with R&D for new products, others – with design, engineering or production, promotion, advertising, logistics, sales, technical support, services or utilization. So internationalization of curricula and courses content needs to become the important strategy for universities and for business schools especially.
Internationalization of curricula means: 1) internationalization of educational programs and of courses’ content, 2) flexibility of curriculum (where it is still not yet achieved, for example in Russia), 3) internationalization of teaching methods and forms, 4) internationalization of administrative activity as a context for educational process, 5) internationalization of scientific research as a base for internationalization of curricula.
Internationalization of educational programs supposes consideration of convertibility of degrees and courses.
That means internationally recognized graduates’ qualifications. Internationalization, some kind of international standardization of courses’ content can assist in ensuring that all graduates, irrespective of country of study, are receiving a standard set of knowledge and skills. Internationalization of courses’ content means that syllabi are structured and presented in internationally understandable and appropriate way, each course is taught on the base of leading international theory and uses cases from international and global business.
Internationalization and globalization arise many questions for national universities, and their administrators, professors. For example, should universities teach national history or world history? In an age of globalization the supposed answer is – national history needs to be taught in context of the world history. One more question – should students learn more national accounting system or international one (GAAP, for example)? As soon as national accounting system is still in use, it needs to be learned. However, it seems to be important to give students a possibility to take additional (may be for additional payment) courses – in international finance, law and in foreign,
mostly in English, language. And these courses need to be provided by universities pretending to be the leading.
And what about marketing and its national specifics? It seems to be that we do not have now exclusively national, separated from international, marketing theory. As soon as business and marketing knowledge have become global and international today. However we still have national boundaries, and often important economic, demographic, cultural, legal, natural, geographic specifics of national and regional markets. And that is why we still have national marketing practices. At the same time national specifics in Marketing (and in other business administration disciplines) are constantly lessening, decreasing, while global markets and business are growing and expanding their influence on national markets and business. Internationalization of content is the factor of attraction for international student.
Internationalization of course content is useful for universities of developing countries. The reason is growing global outsourcing of professional jobs by companies from developed countries to suppliers in developing countries.
As Ahlawat, S and Ahlawat,S.S. (2006) revealed about US markets ‘While the manufacturing jobs have been moving offshore for the last three decades, the white collar jobs are now moving overseas at an accelerating pace’.
Internationalized education helps graduates in developing countries to receive job positions exported from developed countries. According to Forrester Research (Stewart, 2004) ‘thousands of white-collar jobs are moving overseas every year, and at least 3.3 million jobs in service industries, accounting for $136 billion in wages, will leave the United States by 2015 for lower-cost countries’. Global business seeks the best talent and lowest cost of operations anywhere worldwide. Universities of developed countries can be interested in internationalization of courses’ content too. Across-the-board collaboration demands internationally focused competencies and potential global collaborators and expatriates need to be acquainted with national specifics of foreign markets.
Flexibility of curriculum is a norm in industrially developed countries. That means customization of set of courses learned by student, individual curriculum selected by student herself/himself. Individual curriculum forms the unique competitive advantages for student, his personal career path. The ability to provide customized and individualized curriculum is the serious competitive advantage of US and western universities, working in turbulent, hypercompetitive environments. In Russia individual curriculum is still not yet introduced for the majority of students. The minority of students have some possibility of limited diversification of common curriculum because, for example, of studying abroad for a semester. Or some additional courses can be studied in University. However, uncommon curriculum here is far more exception than the rule and norm.
The tendency of internationalization of higher education has been reflected by concepts of ‘borderless education’ and ‘transnational education’ (Adams 2001; Ryan 2002). One of the main questions – what degree of internationalization is needed for specific University/Program/Course (see Fig. 1)? Does degree of optimal internationalization depend on country/region of location of university, on university status (scale of activity), on professional program (business administration, public administration, law, arts)? Is it necessary to internationalize all programs and all courses or is it yet neither important nor possible now? What regional component needs to be considered as dominating in internationalized program/course? Is it North American, or European, or Australian, or Asian? What internationalization is important for marketing class taught in USA? And what degree of nationalization, or patriotism, do we need?
The direction, the strategy of internationalization is clear, however implementation is not less important.
Internationalization needs to be regarded as a key word in trends description of external environment, as opportunity and threat factors in a SWOT-analysis. At the same time internationalization of University activity needs to be described as Strength or Weakness in SWOT-analysis matrix. University Strategy of internationalization needs to be translated into operational, current decisions for everyday activity for everybody at the university. Every university professor, administrator and everyone from president to janitor at the university needs to know not only the basic strategy, but what he/she has to do today, in this class, in this current moment of time.
Organizational internationalization activities, such as introduction of curriculum individualization and credit system, are supposed to be the task of university administration. In Russia it depends on government regulation too.
At the same time internationalization of course content and materials is more the task of professors’ level of responsibility. I teach Public Relations and Consumer Behavior for marketing students (majors in marketing) at the largest economical university in Russia. I see internationalization as a factor of success for many of our marketing
alumni. So I try to internationalize not only my courses content, but also course materials learned in class. My previous experience of teaching consumer behavior course in English for selected student group at the university level has been projected in teaching Public Relation for regular marketing students. Cases of American communications firms were brought to class. Cases were downloaded from internet-sites of communications agencies and they were in English. I distributed cases in class and some time later suggested volunteers to read text orally in Russian for the group. I divided case text into separate parts and every student was given a part of case text for oral translation. Students translated the text orally one by one so that everybody in class could understand case content. After oral translation students discussed the text and made decisions on required tasks. Question for discussion and tasks to be performed for each case were elaborated by myself. During oral case reading it appeared that about 60% of students in class were fluent in English enough to read and understand the case content in order to discuss the case situation and to make the decisions in Russian. And only about 10% were not able to read case in English because they studied German or French but not English. I also use my Power Point slides from previously taught in English Consumer Behavior course for lecturing in regular Consumer Behavior class. It saves time and makes students become more involved in international perspective of course material.
Figure 1. Globalization and internationalization of higher education
Using English-language materials and books directly in class, without previous translation in Russian saves time and helps to escape translation mistakes which are common for translated textbooks published in Russia. I suppose there is a growing and sufficient demand now in Russia for original, not translated textbooks – on the majority of business administration courses. One of Russian publishers of translated books said to me a few years ago that there was no difference for them in publishing books in Russian or in English. Prices in Russia on thick translated textbooks are constantly growing and approaching prices on original textbooks. So there is a growing market opportunity for publishers to publish original English-language textbooks here in Russia for Russians and for Central and Eastern Europe.