David Mills and Simon Marginson present on the theme of ‘The global and the post-colonial’ What is ‘global’ higher education?
Simon Marginson
What is the global in higher education and how does it relate to the national domain where institutions and persons are primarily funded and ordered? To grasp this we need to set aside some common assumptions. First, the global and the international are not identities, or ‘dimensions’ integrated into the ‘purpose, functions or delivery’ of education in one university or nation. They can only exist as relationships. Second, global relations are understood in terms of connectedness – people, institutions and ideas crossing borders – but while connections are certainly part of the picture, to define the global in this manner leaves us stuck at the rim of the ‘national container’. We need a way of imagining the global in higher education that brings it into open view, enhances its potential value and interrogates relations of power within it (relationships are not always symmetrical), even while national and local phenomena can also freely appear. The paper will argue that the global is most usefully understood in terms of relational systems at the world and world-regional level, and globalisation as the process of integration on this scale. Just as national higher education is a process of nation-state building, globalisation in higher education and science is a process of world-building. Global systems are partial and uneven, but higher education – especially its knowledge-intensive components – is among the most global of all human activities and constitutes a form of global civil society.
From anti-colonial to post-global and back again: Geopolitical imaginaries and the study of ‘global’ higher education
David Mills
For anticolonial nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the post-war British ‘Asquith’ university colleges represented a second colonialization of the African continent. Instead, Nkrumah argued, such universities, once planted, should ‘take root amidst African traditions and cultures’. These early postcolonial critiques shaped the evolution and Africanisation of universities like Makerere and Dar-es-Salaam. Contemporary visions for ‘post-developmental’ higher education, ‘pluriversities’, or knowledge decolonisation also seek to redefine the contours of higher education systems. In order to understand the influence of these contested geopolitical imaginaries on the field of ‘global’ higher education studies, this paper explores the relationship between policy scholarship, epistemic politics and disciplinary loyalties.
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David Mills and Simon Marginson present on the theme of ‘The global and the post-colonial’ What is ‘global’ higher education?
Simon Marginson
What is the global in higher education and how does it relate to the national domain where institutions and persons are primarily funded and ordered? To grasp this we need to set aside some common assumptions. First, the global and the international are not identities, or ‘dimensions’ integrated into the ‘purpose, functions or delivery’ of education in one university or nation. They can only exist as relationships. Second, global relations are understood in terms of connectedness – people, institutions and ideas crossing borders – but while connections are certainly part of the picture, to define the global in this manner leaves us stuck at the rim of the ‘national container’. We need a way of imagining the global in higher education that brings it into open view, enhances its potential value and interrogates relations of power within it (relationships are not always symmetrical), even while national and local phenomena can also freely appear. The paper will argue that the global is most usefully understood in terms of relational systems at the world and world-regional level, and globalisation as the process of integration on this scale. Just as national higher education is a process of nation-state building, globalisation in higher education and science is a process of world-building. Global systems are partial and uneven, but higher education – especially its knowledge-intensive components – is among the most global of all human activities and constitutes a form of global civil society.
From anti-colonial to post-global and back again: Geopolitical imaginaries and the study of ‘global’ higher education
David Mills
For anticolonial nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the post-war British ‘Asquith’ university colleges represented a second colonialization of the African continent. Instead, Nkrumah argued, such universities, once planted, should ‘take root amidst African traditions and cultures’. These early postcolonial critiques shaped the evolution and Africanisation of universities like Makerere and Dar-es-Salaam. Contemporary visions for ‘post-developmental’ higher education, ‘pluriversities’, or knowledge decolonisation also seek to redefine the contours of higher education systems. In order to understand the influence of these contested geopolitical imaginaries on the field of ‘global’ higher education studies, this paper explores the relationship between policy scholarship, epistemic politics and disciplinary loyalties.
Us and them? Analysing the inclusion of foreign-born academics in British academia
Centre for Global Higher Education
1 hour 15 minutes
6 years ago
Us and them? Analysing the inclusion of foreign-born academics in British academia
Abertay University's Toma Pustelnikovaite on the nuances underlying the influx of migrant academics into the UK. Featuring research with Dr Shiona Chillas (University of St Andrews).
The number of foreign academics in the UK has been increasing over the last forty years, and currently comprises a third of UK’s academic profession (Lenihan and Witherspoon 2018). Existing research on migrant scholars, however, tends to focus on international careers and analyse mobility as a resource for career development and progression. Distinctively, our paper seeks to understand how the academic profession has responded to the influx of migrant scholars.
We draw on the concept of social closure in the sociology of professions, and on empirical data from 62 semi-structured interviews with foreign-born academics working in 13 British universities. Findings show that academia has developed three social closure strategies – integration, exclusion and subordination – to control the absorption of migrant academics. The profession enacts these strategies to subtly regulate access, work and intra-professional relationships, selectively incorporating foreign-born academics and maintaining the status quo.
The paper demonstrates nuances underlying the influx of migrant academics into the UK, suggesting that patterns of inclusion shape migrant scholars’ working lives.
Centre for Global Higher Education
David Mills and Simon Marginson present on the theme of ‘The global and the post-colonial’ What is ‘global’ higher education?
Simon Marginson
What is the global in higher education and how does it relate to the national domain where institutions and persons are primarily funded and ordered? To grasp this we need to set aside some common assumptions. First, the global and the international are not identities, or ‘dimensions’ integrated into the ‘purpose, functions or delivery’ of education in one university or nation. They can only exist as relationships. Second, global relations are understood in terms of connectedness – people, institutions and ideas crossing borders – but while connections are certainly part of the picture, to define the global in this manner leaves us stuck at the rim of the ‘national container’. We need a way of imagining the global in higher education that brings it into open view, enhances its potential value and interrogates relations of power within it (relationships are not always symmetrical), even while national and local phenomena can also freely appear. The paper will argue that the global is most usefully understood in terms of relational systems at the world and world-regional level, and globalisation as the process of integration on this scale. Just as national higher education is a process of nation-state building, globalisation in higher education and science is a process of world-building. Global systems are partial and uneven, but higher education – especially its knowledge-intensive components – is among the most global of all human activities and constitutes a form of global civil society.
From anti-colonial to post-global and back again: Geopolitical imaginaries and the study of ‘global’ higher education
David Mills
For anticolonial nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the post-war British ‘Asquith’ university colleges represented a second colonialization of the African continent. Instead, Nkrumah argued, such universities, once planted, should ‘take root amidst African traditions and cultures’. These early postcolonial critiques shaped the evolution and Africanisation of universities like Makerere and Dar-es-Salaam. Contemporary visions for ‘post-developmental’ higher education, ‘pluriversities’, or knowledge decolonisation also seek to redefine the contours of higher education systems. In order to understand the influence of these contested geopolitical imaginaries on the field of ‘global’ higher education studies, this paper explores the relationship between policy scholarship, epistemic politics and disciplinary loyalties.
