The Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI) was initiated by UCSC in 2011 to stimulate the enhancement and understanding of the internationalisation process and activities of Università Cattolica. This publication is the result of its first Seminar and by that also its first publication. The book is written by members of the Scientific Committee and Management Board of CHEI, and provides an informative introduction to the key issues and trends in higher education internationalisation in three parts. The first part deals with internationalisation, meaning and rationales, and includes three conceptual articles introducing the concept of internationalisation in the context of the global knowledge society we life in, as well as two chapters giving concrete examples of international strategies from Northern America. The second part deals with internationalisation of the curriculum and contains four chapters on different aspects of how to improve the internationalisation of our curriculum. In the final part of this book the focus is on internationalisation and Italian higher education. One chapter deals with the important question of how Italian employers value international education. Another chapter outlines a model of analysis of the drivers of inbound student mobility and considers the Italian case against other European countries. The third chapter discusses the current state of internationalisation at Università Cattolica within the context of higher education globalisation, indicating that to compete with outstanding universities at the global level, additional actions should be taken. The CHEI and this publication are intended to contribute to that objective.
Since the late nineties, there has throughout Europe been a growing focus on internationalisation of curricula. This may be seen as a reaction to the traditional and sustained focus on internationalisation abroad. It became clear that internationalisation abroad would always be a domain of a (small) minority of students. Therefore, if intercultural and international competences would be considered essential for all students, the curriculum would remain the only available tool to ensure that students would actually acquire these. This was the situation in 1999, when Bengt Nilsson coined the term 'Internationalisation at home' and it had remained fundamentally unchanged.
In recent discussions on the internationalisation of higher education, the constant introduction of new terms and definitions has rightly been criticised. Although we are fully aware of this, we consider that the importance of clarifying the concept of 'internationalisation at home' overrides the urge to limit the number of definitions. We have recently proposed a new definition of internationalisation at home. Although defining it does not guarantee its implementation, since there are fundamental challenges to be overcome, it is hoped that this redefinition might bring implementation a step closer.
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