"Internationalisation of higher education: an exploratory study of internationalisation strategies in selecting foreign markets and mode of education service delivery in New Zealand tertiary institutions"

Abstract

The internationalisation of higher education becomes a prime topic that is attracting more concern of academics and practitioners around the world. Internationalisation brings to institutions not only opportunities for internationalising their curricula, student and staff development, and cross-cultural understanding, but also a huge income generation. In fact, export education contributes significantly to national economic development of many countries, especially Australia, the UK, US and Canada. In New Zealand, export education also plays an important role in the national economic development, with total annual earnings of approximately $2 billion contributed to the economy, of which public higher education institutions are core business units and play an important role in internationalisation. In spite of the importance of export education and the role of higher education institutions, there has been little research conducted to explore how the New Zealand institutions internationalise their educational activities and what barriers, the institutions have experienced, hindering their internationalisation process. The research on these issues would be fruitful for the New Zealand government in order to help its institutions to improve their competitiveness and attract more international students, and further contribute to the national economy. Also, the research fills in a gap identified in the literature regarding higher education internationalisation. There is lack of research on international strategies of education institutions, especially strategies in market selection and entry mode choice. The strategies are very important and have significant impact on the institutions' performances, measured by the number of international students recruited. As discussed above, this research is based on the data collected from semi-structured interviews among eight institutions (five universities and three institutes of technology and polytechnics- ITPs) around New Zealand. The study first reviews the literature on internationalization of higher education and related issues including motivations/drivers of higher education internationalization and the role of higher education institutions in this internationalization process. The aim of this exploratory study is to understand strategies that the New Zealand institutions have undertaken to internationalize their education service activities, especially strategies in international market research, market selection and entry mode choice, and how these strategies impact on the institutions' performance. The research also identifies barriers that are hindering the internationalization process and the role of the New Zealand government in the internationalization of its institutions. The findings in this research indicate that the motivations of internationalization influence foreign market selection and entry mode strategies of the New Zealand institutions, resulting in different impacts on the institutions' performance. Also, as most New Zealand institutions are under funded by the Government, they are not active in conducting primary market research. Thus, most of their market selection decisions are based on analyzing market intelligence provided by government agencies and other secondary sources. Regarding entry mode strategy, the New Zealand institutions are very conservative in terms of committing resources overseas, thus export mode is used the most frequently by the institutions in most current markets. Moreover, the research also finds out that the common internationalization barriers facing New Zealand institutions include a low New Zealand education profile, strict immigration policy, limited product range, insufficient resources, fierce international competition, and lack of foreign market intelligence. This finding also indicates that ITPs have to cope with more challenges than universities in internationalizing their educational activities. Finally, the research draws several policy options for the New Zealand government to further improve the country's competitiveness in international markets and attract more international students to its institutions. The study also suggests new areas for further research.