INTERNATIONALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH ON TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRAȘOV, ROMANIA

During the last decade, when assessing higher education institutions (HEIs), internationalization is more and more present. If we look either at the quality criteria used by different quality assurance agencies or at the criteria used for different rankings, the international dimension of a university cannot be anymore neglected. In this respect, the way universities integrate and prepare both domestic and foreign students as well as how communication with teaching staff is ensured are important, thus creating the necessary experiences with a real impact on HEIs’ image within the international educational market. This paper addresses the issue of internationalization of higher education by providing a method to assess the HEI’s attractiveness from the point of view of international registered students and visiting academic staff (teaching and administrative) over a period of time of minimum 5 years. It is widely acknowledged that, besides research, teaching and learning are main activities of any HEI so academic processes offered to students and teaching and administrative staff as well are important not only as they determine funding, but positive experiences create trust which is the best marketing instrument for any organisation, whether public or private.

The descriptive research herein presented methodologically uses statistical data collected from Transilvania University of Brașov, Romania. Located in the heart of the country, this university advertises itself with ”learn to be central”. In this respect, the descriptive data shows that the number of foreign students who choose Transilvania University for their studies is continuously increasing with regard to both long-term education (complete Bachelor studies of 3-4 years) and short-term education (grant holders from Erasmus+ programme or from other internal university programmes). And so is the number of foreign teaching and administrative personnel incoming and outgoing which blossoms academic cooperation and enhances the implementation of good practices in teaching, research and management at institutional level.