University of Applied Sciences, Fulda

The Effects of Internationalisation of Education

Some argue that internationalisation of education can help to increase the quality of education. Mobility and student exchange programs provide the students with more general qualifications, such as mastery of a foreign language and an awareness of other cultural values and social norms, which are necessary for functioning successfully in a business context or in societal communication and collaboration. ”Exposure to different teaching methods and
styles, but also to another form of organising life outside academia, are known to develop the ability of individuals to tolerate ambiguity and to avoid rigid expectation patterns. All in all, content-related knowledge and the more general key qualifications together result in the type of ‘international literacy’ which will increasingly be required of tomorrow’s leaders.” (Internationalisation of Higher Education, p. 17)
Others speak about the economic benefits of the process. Economic considerations are not limited to the countries which charge tuition fees. The cost of living and studying can bring a significant amount of money into a country. “The American Department of Commerce estimates the total combined expenditure on tuition and cost-of–living of foreign students in the US at around seven billion dollars per year” (Internationalisation in Higher Education, p. 18). Likewise, other benefits or effects of educating foreign students with a more long-term nature should not be underestimated.
Foreign students who go back to their countries can play an important role in the economic and political relations between their native countries and the host country. On the other hand, many point out the social and cultural effects of the process. Students who go to another country to study are in fact perceived as ‘mini- ambassadors’ of their respective country, its language, and culture. Learning another language and culture can help expand the horizon of the students and save them from considering the values with which they are familiar to be the only absolutely correct ones.
Attracting foreign students will normally be a means of internationalising the home campus as well. The presence of foreign students will add a ‘foreign’ dimension to the education of the local students. It can enrich the knowledge of
host country students about other methods of learning and conceiving the world and, of course, help them learn a new language as well as a foreign culture.
Foreign students definitely learn a lot about the host country by living there for a period of time, but each of them brings along the cultural values and educational experiences from their home countries. It is obvious that most of the students, especially those who have not lived in another country before, will experience difficulties, frustrations, and excitement. They approach the new system with the expectations they have on the basis of the system they know. It is, therefore, quite possible that foreign students will experience some kind of education shock in another country; that is more or less go through a process of shock, frustration, understanding, adaptation, and integration. The present study discusses such an education shock in the framework of an international program offered in Fachhochschule Fulda in Germany.
The education shock, the writer believes, is rooted in the cultural backgrounds of the students. In order to find out more about the role of culture in shaping the educational expectations of the students, semi-controlled interviews with students from America, Europe, Africa, and Asia were conducted, and a qualitative analysis of the data was carried out, based largely on grounded theory.