Internationalisation Trends in Higher Education and the Changing Role of International Student Mobility

“Internationalization” of higher education has so many meanings that only a few elements are shared by all actors and experts: border-crossing is the key element, and a trend toward growth is implied. International student mobility is a traditional key feature—along with knowledge transfer—to which more attention is paid than to other features. Definitions and statistics vary enormously, e.g. reference to citizenship of mobility for the purpose of study, short-term mobility vs. mobility for the whole study program, “vertical” vs. “horizontal” mobility, and mobility at a certain moment in time vs. the event of mobility in the course of study. Analyses of “vertical mobility” are mostly case studies and can hardly be summarized. Short-term mobility, notably within Europe, is more thoroughly analyzed, thereby comprising comparisons between mobile and non-mobile students and between countries. They suggest that mobility leads only to marginally superior academic and general skills, but to impressive international skills. This is reflected in small career advantages, but substantially higher shares of visible international tasks as well as in frequent international career mobility. Also, former mobile students’ degree of satisfaction is high regarding the impact on international understanding and general personality development. Divergent factors suggest, for the future, that internationalization without mobility will play an increasing role and that it will be more strongly affected by international political conflicts.