Globalizing forces have both transformed and made the higher education sector increasingly homogenous. Growing similarities among universities have been attributed to isomorphic pressures to ensure and/or enhance legitimacy by imitating higher education institutions that are perceived as successful internationally, particularly universities that are highly ranked globally (Cantwell & Kauppinen, 2014; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). In this article, we compare the strategic plans of 78 high, low, and unranked universities in 33 countries in 9 regions of the world. In analyzing the plans of these 78 universities, the paper explores patterns of similarity and difference in universities' strategic positioning according to Suchman's (1995) three types of legitimacy-cognitive, pragmatic, and moral. We find evidence of stratified university strategies in a global higher education landscape that varies by institutional status. In offering a corrective to neo-institutional theory, we suggest that patterns of globalization are mediated by status based differences in aspirational behavior (Riesman, 1958) and "old institutional" forces (Stinchcombe, 1997) that contribute to differently situated universities pursuing new paths in seeking to build external legitimacy.

Drawing from resource dependence theory, this study explores the extent to which international student enrollment related to institutional decisions to shift to in-person instructional strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus our study particularly on July 2020, a time during which tensions around international students’ legal status in the US were especially high. Our results suggest that leaders at private not-for-profit institutions were significantly more likely to shift instructional strategies to include more in-person instruction, thus allowing more international students to enroll but also placing at risk the health of individuals on their campuses and in their local communities. A similar result was not found for public institutions. These results speak to the extent to which private institutions in the US have become financially dependent on international students’ tuition and have clear implications for the financial futures of US higher education institutions. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10734-021-00768-7.

Amidst public calls for greater internationalization, universities are marketing to international students. We explore how universities in regional hubs (Lee & Schoole, 2015) enact "dramaturgical performances" (Goffman, 1959), presenting images of themselves in geopolitical space. We find: (1) bifurcated marketing strategies to distinct student audiences; (2) differences between public and private universities in featuring lifestyle or academic issues, and higher education as a private or a public good, as in "academic capitalism" (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004); & (3) distinctive positioning of universities by type and region in their local/national/regional space, highlighting the possibility of alternatives to dominant Anglo-American internationalization models. abroad: Higher education and the quest for global citizenship.

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