Examining the Factors Shaping the Debate Around the Globalization of Higher Education: Key Factors and Influences

Key Concepts And Theoretical Underpinnings

Trying to define globalisation and its key drivers is a vital starting point, and from there to assess its ties with HE. Historically, globalisation rose to prominence in the 1980s when Peter Dicken’s (1986) seminal work Global Shift tried to map the changes occurring at a global level, especially the move from the idea of a nation-state to worldwide interconnectedness brought about by advances in technology and communication, and the prevalence of neoliberal philosophies in the economic and business spheres (Dicken, 1986; Held & McGreew, 2002). However, the difficulty of defining globalisation explicitly lies in its inherent complexity, the multiplicity of the forces that shape it, and the very subjectivity of the paradigm (Scholte, 2002). Nevertheless, despite the conceptual issues, its importance and impact in terms of affecting the world’s societal structures are commonly accepted (Baylis et al, 2017). In his 1986 book, Dicken also makes an important distinction between internationalisation and globalisation. Internationalisation is the expansion of predominantly economic activities across nations and the increasing speed with which that takes place, which at its core was not new and had been occurring since antiquity. On the other hand, globalisation is a more advanced form of internationalisation that goes beyond transactional elements and requires the sharing of a common base to enable the interconnectedness of economic activities (Beck, 2015).