Operationalizing “Internationalization” in the Community College Sector: Textual Analysis of Institutional Internationalization Plans

Abstract

Aim/Purpose: This paper evaluates three community college internationalization plans using quantitative textual analysis to explore the different foci of institutions across three U.S. states. Background: One of the purposes of community college internationalization is to equip future generations with the skills and dispositions necessary to be successful in an increasingly globalized workforce. The extent to which international efforts have become institutionalized on a given campus may be assessed through the analysis of internationalization plans. Methodology: We use the textual analysis tool Voyant, which has rarely been employed in educational research, being more frequently applied in the humanities and under the broad heading of “digital scholarship”. Contribution: Extant literature examining internationalization plans focuses on the four-year sector, but studies centered on the two-year sector are scarce. This study addresses that gap and seeks to answer the research questions: How do community colleges operationalize internationalization in their strategic plans? What terms and/or concepts are used to indicate international efforts? Findings: Key findings of this study include an emphasis on optimization of existing resources (human, cultural, community, and financial); the need for a typology of open access institution internationalization plans; and the fragmentation of international efforts at the community college level. Impact on Society: It is clear that internationalization at community colleges may take shape based on optimization of resources, which begs the question, how can education sector actors best support open access institutions in developing plans tailored to the local context and resources at hand? Future Research: We recommend additional use of quantitative textual analysis to parse internationalization plans, and imagine that both a larger sample size and cross-national sample might yield interesting results. How do these institutional groupings operationalize internationalization in the corpus of their plans?

Exploring High-Quality Institutional Internationalization for Higher Education Sustainability in China: Evidence from Stakeholders

“…The current findings are related to other papers in the field of institutional internationalization. Many studies also indicated that stakeholders' perception of institutional internationalization is of significant to promote the international development of various higher education institutions, theoretically and practically [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Based on the current results, we propose that both national and local government should promote the institutional internationalization in the post-epidemic era, and that Chinese-foreign academic cooperation should be enhanced for students and faculty members.…”

A Textual Analysis of Community College Internationalization Plans in the U.S. and Canada

“…Given that the broader internationalization literature has a heavy emphasis on mobility, this finding is notable for different reasons. First, it echoes findings in an analysis of three U.S. community college internationalization plans (Unangst & Barone, 2019). In that paper, the authors speculated that the U.S. community college internationalization plans in focus seemed to point to an optimization of existing resources, reflecting perhaps a recognition of robust international assets already present in the given HEI setting, response to neoliberal divestment in public higher education, and the realities of already-overworked student, staff, and faculty bodies.…”

“…We made the strategic decision to analyze two internationalization agendas per national case for several reasons. First, as evidenced by previous research on U.S. community college internationalization plans, these publicly available documents are scarce (Unangst & Barone, 2019), which makes it impossible to evaluate any representative grouping of plans by state or provincial context. Given that community, college missions, and operations in both national cases are closely connected to local assets, needs, and workforce demands, we thought it appropriate to consider internationalization agendas from distinctly different environments though this research does not seek generalizability but rather transferability.…”

“…Within the U.S. community college sector, studies have found that articulated commitments (apart from internationalization plans) are central to sustainable internationalization (McRaven & Somers, 2017). An emerging literature has examined the extent to which community college internationalization plans drive sustainable practices, with Unangst and Barone (2019) finding that community colleges optimized existing resources (both human and financial) in their pursuit of internationalization rather than engaging with new internationalization schemes or collaborations. This tactic may reflect the need for community colleges to remain flexible and adaptive due to resource constraints associated with public disinvestment, rising sunk costs, and in many cases increased enrollment.…”

International Higher Education from a Global Perspective: A Special Series

“…The second study by Lisa Unangst and Nicole Barone in their work entitled, "Operationalizing 'Internationalization' in the Community College Sector: Textual Analysis of Institutional Internationalization Plans" evaluates three community college's plans for internationalization. Specifically, Unangst and Barone (2019) address the gap in the literature between four-year institutions and two-year institutions in addressing internationalization on their campus. They found that a critical factor in determining internationalization activities for the three community colleges examined was financial resources.…”