Lemmens The Virtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education Bernd Wächter (ed.) Aca papers on International Cooperation in Education The V irtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education

Conclusions
14. My conclusions, therefore, are ambivalent and, perhaps, ambiguous:
I
First, what I called the “old” paradigm of academic cooperation is
being superseded by a “new” paradigm. But this shift owes much
more to the growth of a knowledge society and to globalisation, than
to the potential of information and communication technology. And
“virtuality” is not cause but effect;
II
Second, ICT has merely intensified “virtual” connections between
people and organisations; it has not invented these connections,
which have existed in less intense forms for many centuries;
III Third, the detailed effects of ICT on particular forms of academic
cooperation are not all one-way; they are not always pushing consist-
ently in the same direction, to greater “virtuality”. There are cases
where the opposite may be happening.
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Professor Marijk van der Wende
Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS)
Enschede, The Netherlands
The possibilities and limits of virtual mobility 
in international cooperation
Introduction
The last time I met with many of you was at a DAAD/IIE conference in New
York in January 2000. The title of this conference was: “The internationally
mobile academy”. According to the various sessions and discussions, this
referred (as usual) merely to the international and physical mobility of indivi-
duals. In my presentation I then emphasised that it could as well be under-
stood as the academy, the institution itself, becoming mobile. This reading of
the theme was at least as important in my eyes. Like it was introduced as the
central theme of a conference organised some two years before under the
title “The changing role of transnational education: moving education – not
learners” (UNESCO/CEPES, 2000).
The issue of virtual mobility is now the central theme of this meeting. And the
fact that the “virtual phenomenon” is phrased in terms of a “challenge” and
not just as an opportunity seems justified, since it will (and already does
perhaps) have an impact on the core role and activities of the national and
international agencies involved in international higher education cooperation.
The unavoidable impact of the virtualisation of higher education on interna-
tional cooperation and the agencies which play a role in that should be con-
sidered in the context of the following wider trends:
l
The growing demand for higher education worldwide, which, especially in
developing and transition countries, cannot be met by national supply. A
growing gap which opens a market for transnational education;
l
The development of transnational education, which is not the same as
international education as we are used to define it. Transnational educa-
tion is defined as higher education activities in which the learners are
located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution
is based. But it is not necessarily international in terms of its content or
the actual learning experience;
l
Virtual or transnational higher education is linked to a growing commer-
cial interest in higher education: the “business of borderless education”;
l
This commercial or business interest is linked to a paradigm shift in inter-
nationalisation. Traditionally the emphasis was on cooperation. Increas-
ingly, the competition paradigm is driving international initiatives in higher
education;
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l
This growing international / global market for higher education goes hand
in glove with the emergence of new types of providers, a growing range
of stakeholders and a changing role of the government. An in many
cases already deregulating government, which is now more and more
often bypassed in its traditional function of steering higher education
systems by international action. Moreover, these trends are threatening
the monopoly of the traditional universities and thus represent a chal-
lenge for the higher education sector itself;
l
Globalisation, competition and virtualisation lead to greater diversification
in higher education in terms of different types of institutions and provid-
ers and the move towards more mixed-funding models (public-private).
For some, this is a welcome and necessary development in order to add
to the financial basis of a rapidly growing sector, which most govern-
ments cannot afford to finance from public sources only and as a way to
raise quality. Others see it as a major threat to the development of natio-
nal higher education systems (Lajos, 1998) and as a trend exacerbating
dramatic inequalities between universities in the developed world on the
one hand and in developing countries on the other (Altbach, 2001).
Especially in the light of the proposals for the new negotiation round on
the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in (educational) Services these
concerns are growing.
These are the main challenges that the higher education sector is facing in
this context and these will inevitably have consequences for agencies in the
field of international cooperation, which, especially in the case of the national
agencies, usually:
l
Are well-embedded in the traditional relationship between the govern-
ment and the higher education sector;
l
Have a tradition in cooperation rather than in competition;
l
and which (used to) depend to a large extend on public funding sources.
In my further analysis of these trends I will continue to use the concept of
“the virtual challenge” in the larger sense, as it is defined in the conference
announcement, including ICT-supported educational delivery (or e-learning)
and more widely any form of cross-border educational delivery (transnational
education).