Project Abstract
In today’s uncertain times, it is extremely important to protect the role of the university as an independent educational institution where critically informed and socially accountable discussions about alternative futures can take place.
The project Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education (EIHE), funded by the Academy of Finland (2012-2015), examines ethical issues arising from internationalization processes in higher education.
This inter-disciplinary, international mixed-methods research project involves 20 universities around the world. It stems from a shared concern that current financial crises are driving new functionalist and market-driven policies in higher education. These policies reduce the scope of possibilities for imagining change and severely compromise the public role of the university as a critic and conscience of society.
The project will examine and compare official university policies, and the perceptions of faculty, students, and managers engaged with internationalization processes. The data includes both policy documents and qualitative and quantitative data collected through surveys, interviews and ethnographies in 20 sites internationally. Research partners in these institutions have agreed to address the same questions using the same methods of data collection to create a common dataset that can be used for comparisons.
