Abstract:

The current paper explores the internationalization strategies of higher education institutions by investigating international mobility programs. In our research international mobility is interpreted as the professional activity of higher education students, and academic and administrative staff after temporarily relocating to a foreign country.

The concept of internationalization is defined as the phenomenon in which international, intercultural, or global dimensions are significantly integrated into the functions and purposes of higher education. The factors of internationalization are determined based on the following four approaches: activities, competencies, processes, and organization (Knight, 1994).

Study abroad programs on the one hand, support the internationalization of the university environment while on the other hand, developing the competencies of students participating in the study abroad programs (Leutwyler & Meierhans, 2013). There has been an increasing interest in students’ study abroad programs and international teaching mobility programs designed for academic staff in higher education. The number of international students enrolled globally will have surpassed 6.3 million by 2020 (Migration Data Portal, 2020) and is expected to grow to 8 million by 2025 (Quershi, 2021).

Internationalization via academic mobility programs could be crucial: teacher mobility may help to mitigate the average 25% academic staff attrition in Europe (García & Weiss, 2019). These programs also enable academic teaching and research exchange, sharing good practices among international colleagues.

The research methodology included synthesizing the related literature combined with primary data collection through in-depth interviews with higher education managers, who oversee academic mobility programs at Eastern European higher education institutions. The in-depth interviews focused on discovering the motivations of academic staff to participate in mobility programs, exploring which factors are weighed when making this decision, and how the institute can support participation in a mobility program. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed with thematic content analysis. After the initial coding, multiple themes were determined and then categorized while considering the key elements of the literature analysis.

The results show that academic mobility provides a great opportunity for teachers to gain international experience, and exposure and it opened new avenues for international collaboration. Institution-supported travel is considered an important motivating factor, and at the same time, higher education managers found that such travel yielded increasing research productivity.

Keywords:

Internationalization of Higher Education, Higher Education Strategy, Study Abroad Programs, Staff Mobility Programs.