Internationalization in Canadian Higher Education Institutions: Ontario

Abstract

Education is a tool for collaboration among nations. The emergence of concepts as internationalization of educational policies, students-staff exchange programs, internationalization of curriculum, internationalization at home (IAH) or even the emergence of multinational agencies to expedite global exchanges in the realm of Higher Education lead educational policy-makers to confess that segregation of the educational policies from nations’ foreign affairs policies have no promising results than failure of the nations’ educational goals and priorities. Based on the qualitative and case study research methodologies, we adopted critical policy analysis (CPA) to address the question of “why does a Canadian public university engage in internationalization?”. The study showed that the decision to acknowledge internationalization as a priority at a public university in Ontario is based upon different motives ranging from commercial-economic and socio-political to academic-educational and profile-building components. The study also identified the gradual extension of market-based rationales that have historically been absent from traditional university policies in the Canadian context to educational initiatives and academic rationales.