Abstract:

Preparing students for employment in the international knowledge economy has become a general objective of higher education institutions (HEIs). HEIs are trying to satisfy and keep up with the requirements of the global economy by offering a wide range of internationalization programs. Nowadays, the level of internationalization has become a competitive factor and thus an indicator of the perceived quality of HEIs.

Due to the growing diversity of internationalization criteria, HEIs are facing increasing difficulties in organizing and strategically aligning individual criteria into comprehensive programs. Systematic orientation is complicated by a constant emergence of new criteria and concepts. The objective of this paper is to create an effective multifaceted but easy to use framework to systematize internationalization criteria from a HEIs point of view.

To achieve this objective, a systematic review of the current state of research in the field of internationalization of higher education was conducted. From a total of 478 identified papers, 37 relevant ones were systematically filtered out and comprehensively analyzed with structuring content analysis to identify and cluster relevant criteria for the internationalization of HEIs.

The result is a multi-dimensional classification framework to systematize internationalization criteria of HEIs in the main dimensions “internationalization abroad” and ”internationalization at home”, divided into the categories “student”, “faculty”, “research”, “curriculum”, “governance”, “engagement” and “culture”. In form of a compendium, 50 identified characteristics are systematized within this framework to describe internationalization criteria of HEIs.

Successful internationalization of HEIs does not imply that all these characteristics must be offered to the same extent. Rather, this framework allows a clearer organization and categorization of internationalization processes. It offers HEIs concrete criteria to strategically align internationalization programs and identify strengths and limitations.

In future follow-up research, this framework can be extended by further dimensions and categories to systematize internationalization criteria of HEIs in a more detailed and therefore more comprehensive way.

Keywords:

Internationalization, higher education institution, virtual collaborative learning, e-learning.