notes on academic internationalisation rein raud tallinn university
TRANSCRIPT
Notes on Academic Internationalisation
Rein RaudTallinn University
What are universities for?
graduates
publications
grants
knowledge
understanding
critical thought
creativity
innovation
✤ “Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.” Richard Luecke and Ralph Katz, Managing Creativity and Innovation, Harvard Business School Press 2003
✤ Innovation is what makes the economy grow and develop in quality as well as competitiveness
In practice, innovation thus understood also
✤increases our use of natural resources and need for energy
✤pollutes the environment
✤alienates people by reducing face-to-face communication
✤creates artificial needs and forces people to adjust to products
✤increases the social gravity of metropolitan areas
So maybe the relations between knowledge and productive practice should also be critically re-evaluated?
What are universities?
structure
buildings
equipment
universitas magistrorum et scholarium
community of teachers and scholars
a meeting place for different minds
an environment for processes to evolve
a repository for the intellectual achievements of the past
Why do universities have to be
international?
export of educational services
creating a pool of recruits for the corporate sector
attracting brains from abroad
an ideology based on domination and
competition
yes, this is very much the way most of the world still functions
but we don’t want to keep it that way, do we?
✤ imagined, because none of their members will ever have met all of the others with whom s/he firmly identifies
✤ communities, because they are joined by the flow of the same information (in the modern age: newspapers and books)
How do nations come into being?
✤ communities are created by all kinds of texts and what we do with them
✤ universities are communities, and ideally parts of a larger community
✤ it is an essential element of their task to enhance the free movement of texts and ways of interpreting them
✤ it is essential that they expose their membership to different ways of seeing things
in the ideal classroom, everybody is a teacher
internationalisation is a key element in the
quality of education and research
What keeps universities from being
international?
Traditional understanding of the study process:
a closed list of subjects
taught in sequence
arranged along the nominal duration of the cycle
students are encapsulated into groups
they become the objects, not the subjects of their education
disrupting the process for the period of exchange creates problems in advancement
knowledge acquired elsewhere does not fit into the structure of studies
Arguments in favour of the traditional process:
“this is how things have always been done”
“otherwise, we cannot guarantee that all graduates know the same things”
employability
“a set of achievements, skills, understandings and personal attributes that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy”
UK’s Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team, 2005
“The more generic the skill, ie the wider its applicability, the more valuable it is in employability terms”
P.Tamkin & J.Hillage, Employability and Employers: the missing piece of the jigsaw, Institute for Employment Studies, 1999
letting the student combine her personal
characteristics with the content of studies - letting her be the
subject of the study process - enhances
employability
What practical conclusions can we draw from all this?
degree structures have to be as liberal as possible
international students have to be integrated into regular university life
foreign language skills are a part of any job description
international experience should be incorporated into the structure of studies
What have we done in Tallinn?
established 2005a little below 10 000 students (33% in graduate programs)538 faculty members
• B2 requirement in a foreign language for all graduates
• all PhD-requiring positions announced internationally
• over 40 bilateral agreements
• over 300 Erasmus agreements
• the only university in Estonia with more incoming than outgoing exchange students
• “friendliness” is a declared value of the university
• all undergraduate programs contain 1/3 of electives and 1/3 free electives
• modules in English to be introduced in all Estonian programs
• students form 20% of all decision-making bodies
www.summerschool.tlu.ee
