It depends on what kind of internationalization you are interested in: attracting foreign students (then it may depend on the university's location and surroundings - e.g. some students are interested in exotic places - but also on the quality of education, availability of scholarships and jobs...) or foreign staff (then you have to offer good salaries and living conditions, but also create a great research environment and teaching load should be reasonable) or if you wish to send your staff abroad (this means having enough funds for travel costs etc. but also co-operation agreements with foreign universities; the latter is important for the first 2 types of internationalization, too)...

It depends on what kind of internationalization you are interested in: attracting foreign students (then it may depend on the university's location and surroundings - e.g. some students are interested in exotic places - but also on the quality of education, availability of scholarships and jobs...) or foreign staff (then you have to offer good salaries and living conditions, but also create a great research environment and teaching load should be reasonable) or if you wish to send your staff abroad (this means having enough funds for travel costs etc. but also co-operation agreements with foreign universities; the latter is important for the first 2 types of internationalization, too)...

For the sending of the 'foreign staff' abrod Mrs/Miss Vissak they do not need any funds and/or cooperation. The employment conditions for the public educational Institutions are under the labour laws and the employers (Host Universities/Research Institutess) are obligate of these laws. For Bulgaria and Germany all the foreign (not German or Bulgarian Citizens) academic staff received salaries by the corresponding German, resp. Bulgarian governments.

I am grateful to you all (Dr Kamal, Dr Tila, and Dr Bojidarka) for answering my question.

I think one main aspect of internationalization is providing the ability for mobility of students, scholars and credits (courses). If a university adopts an internationalized educational and administrative system, its students and staff can move to other universities in other countries with their research work or credit hours recognized at their home institution. This has been a trend in the EU and many universities in the middle east are adopting these policies. In the coming decades, I believe that universities that do not follow this trend will be isolated and will suffer.

We are meeting this semester to discuss the subject of "internationalizing" faculty and students. We are trying to break this concept down into the skills: what does a person actually do when they have a global awareness?  How does a person manifest this awareness in encounters with others?  In my view, a basic way to start is to ask faculty to refresh the language or languages they studied while in college---what better first step in becoming a "global citizen" than learning a language? 

Martina sums up the situation well. Traditionally international education has been dominated by the economic agenda and only recently have people begun to realise that there is a curriculum implication with this (beyond academic support for international students). There is a growing literature in the field and readers may be interested in the following:

Clifford, V. & Montgomery, C. (2015). Transformative Learning Through Internationalization of the Curriculum in Higher Education. Journal of Transformative Education, 13(1), 46-64.

Haigh, M. and Clifford, V. Integral Vision: a multi-perspective approach to the recognition of Graduate Attributes. Higher Education Research and Development, 30(5), 573-584. (2011).

Clifford, V.A. Engaging the Disciplines in Internationalising the Curriculum, International Journal of Academic Development, 14(2) 133-143. (2009).

The internationalization of higher education goes beyond receiving foreign academic staff and students and to send academic staff and students to other universities. Although the personal experience of them all is usually positive, I think that a true internationalization requires further work. For example, in the case of academic staff, it is important that after staying at another university begins a collaboration through research projects and publications with university colleagues who have visited. Although today is not necessary to  go "physically" to have relationship with academic staff from other countries. I think professional networks are benefiting the internationalization of higher education.

True internationalization of a university embeds global and international perspectives into all aspects of its work.  Some examples:   faculty are encouraged to incorporate international perspectives into the core curriculum in all disciplines; student affairs functions such as residence halls and student activities are encouraged to incorporate strategies that bring international and domestic students together in meaningful ways; study and research abroad are encouraged, supported and designed into requirements for majors for both faculty and students; language study is offered as broadly as possible, or in collaboration with neighboring institutions; specialized majors are supported.  Simply increasing the international student population or participation in study abroad does NOT internationalize an institution.   International students need academic support, and specific programs need to be designed to bring international and domestic students together, such as a language partners program, where students meet one-one, once a week to help international students learn more about the local culture and vice versa.  Developing global perspectives, transnational awareness and intercultural competence need to be an essential part of an institution's mission, articulated and realized with specific actions at the department level in coursework and extra-curricular possibilities.   Academic administrators, student affairs personnel, faculty and departments need to evaluate the aspects of current programming that impede individuals from taking advantage of opportunities or impede their development, and take specific action to reduce those impediments, such as the strictly sequential course requirements in majors like business and engineering.  Courses at partner institutions abroad can be evaluated and approved to fit into those sequences.  It takes effort, but is worth the time.

Success in this area is developmental as HE institutions include internationalization in their strategic goals over a 3-5 year period. Here's a current journal article that helps to show that despite efforts to enhance faculty cultural competence, these are not hitting the ground in practice:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263045894_Generation_I_International_and_invisible_in_a_workforce_education_and_development_graduate_programme_content

Best regards,

Debra

Data Generation I: International and invisible in a workforce edu...

Dear Tareq

Several aspects of successful internationalization of higher education institutions have been proposed in:

HEIs Quality Improvement Through Students and Academic Staff’s Perception: Data Analysis and Robustness of the Results. International Journal for Quality Research, 2017, Vol.11, No.2, pp.261-278.

· Al-Farahidi Performative model to assess HEIs. 4th OQNHE Conference 2017, pp.1-15.

· A Framework for Fostering the Quality of HEIs: Data Collection, Evaluation, Indication and Validation. Int. J. of Quality and Innovation, 2016, Vol.3, No.1, pp.42-66 (Inderscience).

Regards,

Zuhair

Global learning through difference: Considerations for teaching, learning, and the internationalization of higher education

Hilary E Kahn, Melanie Agnew

Journal of Studies in International Education 21 (1), 52-64, 2017

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1028315315622022

Internationalization of higher education

Yuan Gao, Chi Baik, Sophia Arkoudis

The Palgrave International Handbook of Higher Education Policy and Governance, 300-320, 2015

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-45617-5_17