Benefits and challenges of internationalization in South Africa

          

      South African higher education system faces the challenge of meeting the demands of globalization, while still trying to address the issues of inequality, racial discrimination, poverty, and inadequate funding. Internationalization is considered as one of the major strategies of meeting the emerging challenges and is commonly defined as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education” (Knight, 2008, p. 11). According to Knight (2014), internationalization offers benefits as well as unintended consequences.
      One of the major goals of internationalized higher education is to provide the most relevant and quality education to students.  South Africa’s strategy has been relatively successful in increasing the mobility and growth of students and staff. In the South African context, the number of international students has increased from 6,000 in 1996 to 60,552 in 2007, with the majority of them being from other African countries. International students’ decision of destination is generally shaped by several factors including individual choice, economic, and private concerns. Attractiveness of South Africa as the major destination for many international students can be explained in terms of several pull factors including quality programmes in internationally known universities, use of English as the predominant language of learning, affordable cost of education, and safety (Sehoole, 2011).
       Another strong approach is country’s demonstration of a relative success in empowering African people with knowledge generation capacity. South Africa’s philanthropic goals of regionalism led to the growth of intra-Africa internationalization and greater cooperation between African universities (Jowi, 2009). Taking a leading role within the region, South Africa set a national agenda to ‘Africanise’ the purposes, functions, and curriculum of higher education institutions, increase the mobility of African students and staff, establish joint research programmes and institutional agreements, and empower African staff development. Furthermore, South Africa plays a key role in reviving regional universities, establishing regional research networks, and developing systems of south-south collaboration (Jowi, 2009). By strengthening the cooperation, South Africa is becoming “a leading contributor to growth and poverty alleviation in the region” (Kishun, 2007, p. 458).
      Although South Africa’s instrumental approach to internationalization has been successful in some respect, there is a plethora of challenges facing the country in achieving the complex process of internationalization of higher education. First of all, since 1994 there is a little to almost no reference to the term internationalization in national policies and no explicitly stated policy objective of internationalization of higher education in South Africa. It is widely argued that international activities are taken place in an ad-hoc and reactionary manner with poor strategic planning and coordination between ministries, HEIs, and organizations. It has been argued by some that this has resulted as country’s economy could not “break out of the development path of the apartheid era” (Dunn & Nilan, 2007, p. 270).
       Lack of regulatory frameworks, inadequate public funding, poor strategic planning, and loose institutional cooperation resulted in many HEIs unable to competently address the demands and challenges of internationalization. Teferra and Albach (2004) further contribute by saying that institutions’ “inefficient and highly bureaucratic management systems” (p. 44) have resulted in recruiting poorly qualified personnel working within inefficient management infrastructure. In this regard, institutional disorganization directly affects the quality of academic programmes, which is the core of internationalization. Rapid growth of student population in South African universities and inadequate resource capacity resulted in high rate of attrition and failure among students. Universities as local agents failed to provide proper environment for teaching and learning as well as underpinned reluctance of faculty to study and research (Dunn & Nilan, 2007).
          In conclusion, there is an urgent need to develop a coherent and balanced policy framework on the internationalization of higher education in South Africa, which should be supported by sufficient resources support and formulated within the context of the country. Otherwise, country might fail to benefit from educational internationalization as well as to adequately contribute to the development of the continent.

References:

Dunn, M., & Nilan, P. (2007). Balancing economic and other discourses in the internationalization of higher education in South Africa. International Review of Education 53 (3), 265-281.

Jowi, J. O. (2009). Internationalization of higher education in Africa: Developments, emerging trends, issues and policy implications. Higher Education Policy, 22(3), 263-281.

Kishun, R. (2007). The Internationalisation of higher education in South Africa: Progress and challenges. Journal of Studies in International Education, 11(¾), 455-469.

Knight, J. (2008). The internationalization of higher education: complexities and realities. Higher education in Africa: The international dimension, 1-43.

Knight, J. (2014). Is internationalisation of higher education having an identity crisis? In The forefront of international higher education (pp. 75-87). Netherlands: Springer.

Seehoole, C. (2011). Student mobility and doctoral education in South Africa. Perspectives in Education, 29(3), 53-63.

Teferra, D., & Altbach, P. G. (2004). African higher education: Challenges for the 21st century. Higher education, 47(1), 21-50.