Introduction

Various governments set participation in international higher education as a goal for their higher education (HE) institutions, expecting that attracting reasonable numbers of international students will bring benefits to the host country and the world (Lomer Reference Lomer2017, p. 25). For Lomer (Reference Lomer2017, p. 25), this commitment to international HE has become “a part of globalised discourse”. However, whereas in some countries internationalisation of higher education (IHE) has been on the agenda for two or more decades, in other countries its importance, and the development of higher education institutions in this respect, has grown only slowly and has sometimes even stagnated. Quite contrary to the expectation of some experts who see “a highly encouraging picture of internationalisation in Europe” (de Wit et al. 2015), there is a risk that internationalisation is dividing Europe into two parts. One part of the continent will attract the most talented students, develop their potential through high-quality learning experiences and retain them after graduation to advance the economy and society. The other part will suffer from brain drain, provide students with substantially inferior learning experiences, and those who stay will struggle to deal with challenges like climate change, health equity and social justice.

Despite the increasing attention to the topic of IHE, our knowledge of internationalisation remains limited to the conditions in a few regions. Most academic literature discusses internationalisation in the West (e.g. Leask and Carroll Reference Leask and Carroll2011; Tran and Pham Reference Tran and Pham2016; Akdağ and Swanson Reference Akdağ and Swanson2018; Courtois Reference Courtois2018; Clarke, Hui Yang and Harmon 2018; Alexiadou and Rönnberg Reference Alexiadou and Rönnberg2022; see also special issue 4 of the Journal of Studies in International Education from 2021). These works explore IHE in countries already advanced in internationalisation, and that typically have a national strategy for IHE and have English as (one of) the language(s) of instruction (Crăciun Reference Crăciun, Curaj, Deca and Pricopie2018). Research on IHE in Central and Eastern Europe is scant, with the few existing studies being quite recent (Giezynska 2015; Deca and Fiț 2015; Antonowicz et al. Reference Antonowicz, Kohoutek, Pinheiro and Hladchenko2017; Boyadjieva Reference Boyadjieva2017; Dakowska Reference Dakowska2017; Orechova Reference Orechova2021; Aye and Bocsi Reference Aye and Bocsi2023).

This introductory article for the European Political Science symposium on internationalisation illustrates the current uneven level of internationalisation in the European Union by presenting the example of two universities from Central Europe that are each at different stages of internationalisation. Masaryk University in Brno and Comenius University Bratislava have been selected because they are among the frontrunners in internationalisation in their respective countries, given the numbers of international students they attract, incentives provided to teaching staff members to internationalise student learning and the scope of their policies that address internationalisation.

This paper first characterises the two universities and their approaches to internationalisation by examining the presence (or absence) of the features of IHE strategies reported for Central and Eastern Europe and other contexts. This includes attention being paid to educational policy and to educational processes (Orechova Reference Orechova2021), together with the notions of quality, globalisation, sector goals, means versus ends (Alexiadou and Rönnberg Reference Alexiadou and Rönnberg2022) and “prestige culture” dominating the strategic thinking at many universities (Wihlborg and Robson Reference Wihlborg and Robson2017).

The article then discusses the progress the two universities have made in internationalisation together with the challenges they face. It posits that teaching faculty members are key for internationalisation due to their central role in influencing both the learning experience of international students and internationalisation at home, i.e. for students who are not internationally mobile. The paper concludes by recommending what can be done to enhance internationalisation presenting an example of one impactful programme recently implemented at both institutions. Two other articles included in this symposium shed more light on the outcomes of the programme.

When speaking about international students, we use the UNESCO definition of internationally mobile students: these are “individuals who have physically crossed an international border between two countries with the objective to participate in educational activities in the country of destination, where the country of destination of a given student is different from their country of origin” (UNESCO, Institute of Statistics). This definition refers both to degree mobility, when students learn in another country to complete an entire degree programme, and credit mobility, when students are on an exchange programme, for example via Erasmus plus.

Internationalisation of higher education is understood in this paper as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions and delivery of postsecondary education” (Knight Reference Knight2003, p. 2), i.e. with a focus on student learning, which we perceive as the essence of higher education. In line with some other authors (e.g. Yuan Gao 2019; Brandenburg et al. Reference Brandenburg, Ermel, Federkeil, Fuchs, Groos, Menn and de Wit2009), we acknowledge the difficulty of using one comprehensive yet limited set of criteria to measure internationalisation. Referring to key dimensions of internationalisation already in use, including students, faculty, curriculum, research, governance and culture (Yuan Gao 2019, pp. 5, 190), we consider two main indicators that relate to student learning: student mobility and institutional policy. We find the statistics of internationally mobile students important because, as Lomer (Reference Lomer2017) showed for Britain and some other countries, a rise in the number of arriving students can drive policy changes, and changed national policies on international education can influence the teaching and learning of international students. Institutional policy (at the level of the individual HEI) is important, too, as it determines whether internationalisation will have “permeated the missions and ethos of an institution” (Hudzik and Stohl 2009, p. 9) and whether it involves careful planning or remains limited to sporadic activities (Yuan Gao 2019, p. 190).

Masaryk University and Comenius University: approaches to internationalisation

Masaryk University (located in Brno, Czechia) and Comenius University Bratislava (located in Bratislava, Slovakia) are both leading universities in their countries, founded in the same year (1919), originally in the same country (Czechoslovakia), and they are members of the European Universities alliances: ENLIGHT and European Digital UniverCity. Masaryk University (MUNI) is one of the top Czech higher education institutions according to university rankings. In the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, MUNI takes 801–1000th place, # 400 in QS World University Rankings and # 401–500 in Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). In 2023, MUNI enrolled over 35,000 students (Masaryk University Employees and Students 2023). Out of these, almost 1500 students study in foreign language programmes, and nearly 5000 students from Slovakia and about 600 students from other countries study in Czech language programmes. Overall, international students comprise more than 20% of the student body (Masaryk University 2021). Slovak students studying at Masaryk University and other Czech higher education institutions are a specific phenomenon due to the two languages being mutually understandable, a tradition of Slovaks studying at Czech universities, and also Czech universities offering students better infrastructure, including housing, than in Slovakia. Comparatively, few Czech students study in Slovakia, which of course includes Comenius University.

Comenius University (UNIBA) is the largest and leading higher education institution in Slovakia. It ranks 1001–1200th in the THE World University Rankings, #771–780 in QS World University Rankings and #901–1000 in ARWU. Comenius University has a total student body of more than 22,000 students (UNIBA 2023). About 3100 international students studied at UNIBA in 2022–23, which was 14% of all students (Comenius University, 2023: 6) and 15% of all international university students in Slovakia (Annual Report about Higher Education in Slovakia 2022).

In recent years, each of the two universities has made some progress in internationalisation. MUNI has integrated a number of IHE-related goals into its institutional strategy for 2021–2028. All graduates in the Bachelor’s and Master’s Czech language programmes must have passed at least one disciplinary course in English or another foreign language, or have spent a part of their study abroad. The curriculum is intended to develop student global and intercultural competences. University graduates are to speak fluently two foreign languages, and the number of courses taught in foreign languages is to grow in all degree programmes offered in Czech. The university provides financial incentives to its units to run more courses in languages other than Czech and encourage inbound and outbound mobility, and students writing their dissertations in English. The strategy includes clear indicators that allow for assessment of attainment of the goals. Internationalisation of teaching has been supported at MUNI also through its teaching development unit, the Centre for Development of Pedagogic Competences, which offers some training and workshops in English.

UNIBA has worked to improve the foundations for IHE by introducing English language courses to administrative staff, translating fundamental documents to English, displaying English language signs across the university campus and initiating the practice of digital learning agreements for Erasmus exchange programmes (Tancerová 2023). Partnering with nine other European universities in the ENLIGHT consortium has provided UNIBA with access to development projects in five flagship areas including health and well-being, digital revolution, climate action, energy transitions & circular economy and equity.

UNIBA has identified progress in internationalisation as the third strategic aim in its ‘Long-term Plan of Development for 2021–2027’. The plan includes important indicators that address internationalisation, such as the number of educational partnerships and projects with foreign universities, share of teachers with a working experience at a higher education or research institution abroad, number of foreign lecturers, number and share of degree programmes in a foreign language, feedback from international students, number of international students studying in Slovak, and share of students and faculty members who participate in mobility programmes. Even if the goal is enhanced internationalisation of learning, only one from these indicators—course feedback from international students—directly relates to the process of learning. Furthermore, the document does not define targets for what is to be achieved under this and further goals, which makes it hard to evaluate the progress in internationalisation.

Very recently, both universities have had to cope with a major challenge that has some implications for their internationalisation goals, which is the war in Ukraine. Refugees fleeing the conflict have increased the numbers of Ukrainian students and academics at both institutions. In 2022, MUNI won the European Association for International Education award for excellence in internationalisation for supporting these colleagues (Diatelová 2022).

Strategic forward look at internationalisation: similar and different perceptions

At the national level, Czechia and Slovakia have strategies for internationalising higher education, adopted in 2020 and 2021, respectively (Strategie internacionalizace vysokého školství na období od roku 2021; Higher Education Internationalization Strategy 2030). In both documents, quality seems a central concept. Quality is mentioned in relation to a range of areas, including degree programmes, mobilities, infrastructure, research, working environment, process of internationalisation, institutional planning, international cooperation, marketing and recruiting, qualities of admitted students and staff members, integration of international students into the community of local students, the higher education sector as such and quality assurance. The Czech strategy, moreover, refers to the quality of teaching and learning as articulated in its vision: “Thanks to the international dimension and quality of teaching and learning, research and third mission, Czech higher education institutions prepare their graduates for the leading role in the global knowledge society, this way contributing to prosperity and sustainable development of communities at home and abroad” (Strategie internacionalizace vysokého školství na období od roku 2021, p. 4). Enhanced quality of teaching and learning, however, is not perceived as a result of internationalisation but is somehow separate from it. Overall, quality of teaching and learning does not seem to be a concern in either of the two documents; if mentioned, it refers to issues such as assuring the quality of foreign language courses is equal to that of courses offered in the local language. The strategies express an ambition to become an attractive destination for foreign students, but neither of specifies that this will be achieved by increasing the quality of education.

The Slovak and Czech strategies mention globalisation and the necessity to respond to it; they aim to be pro-active and promote comprehensive internationalisation. Yet, here “global” means a globalised labour market (SK) and global knowledge economy (CZ) and is little connected to diversity of students, their needs, knowledge and experiences. Internationalisation is perceived in both contexts as a positive sector goal, and at the same time, it is viewed as a means not an end. IHE is expected to strengthen both education and research, with primary attention paid to education, and it includes the notion of sustainability. Nevertheless, only the Czech strategic document lays out the scope of the suggested activities as extending to integrating and operationalising internationalisation across all dimensions in and around higher education. In Slovakia’s strategic paper, internationalisation is narrowly viewed mostly in relation to mobility and partly in the introduction of new foreign language degree programmes, despite using Knight’s (Reference Knight2003) broader definition, which speaks about integrating various dimensions into the purpose, functioning and results of higher education.

Overall, both strategies conceptualise internationalisation more as a policy than as an educational process, in line with what Orechova (Reference Orechova2021) found to be a typical perception of IHE in Central and Eastern Europe. Slovakia’s strategic document sets as a goal “an improvement in the readiness of Slovak university teachers to lecture and teach in a foreign language” (Higher Education Internationalization Strategy 2030, p. 8), but this aspect of internationalisation is only touched upon. In Czechia’s strategy, academic staff members are viewed as more important for internationalisation. They are considered “the main vehicle of internationalisation in higher education”. What a higher education institution achieves in internationalisation is believed to be “directly dependent upon the level of their competences, experiences and knowledge in the area of internationalisation”. The strategy therefore sees a need to “motivate staff members to engage in internationalisation and develop their competences in this area” (Strategie internacionalizace vysokého školství na období od roku 2021, p. 7). An incentive to achieve “prestige” (Wihlborg and Robson Reference Wihlborg and Robson2017) is not referred to in any of the strategies.

Czechia’s strategic document is vocal about what university teachers need to know to make students benefit from internationalisation, in particular to “prepare curricula with an international and intercultural dimension including potential foreign experience, teach a class that is diverse in terms of culture, language and society, design and implement international projects, work in international teams, establish and actively develop meaningful partnerships” (p. 5). Importantly, the strategy identifies the ways that academic staff are to develop such competences, namely through networking, projects focusing on internationalisation of teaching and learning, and courses that improve their abilities related to internationalisation of the curriculum (Strategie internacionalizace vysokého školství na období od roku 2021, p. 9). The plans include internationalisation of the curriculum, mobilities and recognition of results of study abroad among the criteria for accrediting degree programmes and making recommendations to higher education institutions for how to meet these criteria. In contrast, Slovakia’s strategy assumes academic staff members will acquire the competences related to internationalisation through international mobility and foreign language courses (Higher Education Internationalization Strategy 2030, pp. 8, 30). The Czech strategy says that university teachers will undergo courses offered by the Centres for development of pedagogic competences (p. 9) operated and funded by Czech HEIs.

Both the Slovak and Czech higher education sectors attract international students, though the situation in the two countries is quite different. For example, while the net flow of international students into Czechia was over 38,000 in 2021, Slovakia is a net sender of HE students to other countries, with a negative balance exceeding 15,000 students (Table 1). This is reflected in Slovakia’s very high outbound mobility rate (22.06) and relatively low inbound mobility rate (10.97), even if the data show some important progress in recent years, at least for inbound mobility (Table 2).

Table 1

Net flow of internationally mobile students in four Central European countries.

Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS)

Table 2

Inbound mobility rate (share of foreigners in the total number of students in a given country) and outbound mobility rate (share of citizens studying outside their home country in the total number of students in that country) in four Central European countries.

Source: UNESCO UIS

Challenges of internationalisation

The efforts to promote internationalisation at Masaryk University and Comenius University struggle with similar issues. Vice-rector Břetislav Dančák of Masaryk University identified a decline in student interest to enrol in mobility programmes: for a number of years, the university has offered more places for mobility than local students are willing to take. Some students appear hesitant to travel abroad because their departments are reluctant to recognise in full the credits they earn abroad (Žára 2021). A working paper titled “Conception of strengthening English language education at Masaryk University” (Masaryk University, n.d.) named two other barriers to internationalisation: some English language courses that are listed as on offer but do not allow student enrolment, and English language courses that exclusively admit international students, which prevents internationalisation at home.

Comenius University has not yet publicised its analysis of the challenges of internationalisation. However, recognition of the credits earned by students on mobility programmes abroad is an issue at UNIBA, too, and also some teachers report that students drop courses once they realise they are taught in English (Havelková Reference Havelková, Pleschová and Simon2022, p. 135). If students avoid courses in English or other foreign languages, their language skills and confidence speaking, reading and writing in English remain low, which leads them to study only at their home university. Lack of incentives for faculty members to teach in English, including the unavailability of training programmes, contributes to the widespread practice of departments adding courses to the list of those in English but ultimately teaching them in a local language. The small offering of courses in English, or another foreign language, can leave incoming international students with strange course options, such as taking credits in Introduction to Canadian Literature. Alternatively, international students are not instructed in class with their home peers, but instead are assigned individual tasks and meet separately with the teacher in individual consultations (Blaho Reference Blaho, Pleschová and Simon2022). This is an example of what Dakowska and Harmsen (Reference Dakowska and Harmsen2015) have called the “confrontation of internationalisation with national realities”. It is, then, no surprise that Slovakia ranks among the bottom five EU countries attracting the fewest Erasmus students (Erasmus + 2020 Country Factsheets).

Internationalisation: the way forward

Three of these barriers identified above—hesitance to recognise credits for courses taken abroad, the small selection of courses in English or another foreign language, and low integration of international students in courses taught for home students—suggest that efforts by academic teachers are vital for internationalisation. Institutions need to provide teachers with enough opportunities to enhance the competences needed to teach international students, as well as support teachers’ engagement in international collaborative projects and mobilities, so they perceive internationalisation as an asset for student learning. In the past, international students returned from the UK, which is now among the leaders in IHE, without having made a single contact with a British student (Leask and Carroll Reference Leask and Carroll2011). However, this is no longer true since the UK strategically changed its higher education sector from focusing merely on recruitment of international students to concentrating on the student learning experience (Caruana and Spurling 2007, p. 37).

In a systematic review of IHE that synthesised findings from more than 600 articles published in 2011–2022, Mittelmeier et al. (2022) concluded that the most effective approaches to internationalisation are those undertaken by teachers who carefully reflect on the purpose of internationalisation and design methods accordingly, often disregarding established teaching methods and the scaffolding they are used to. Usually, such courses and programmes rely on active learning, reflective and collaborative learning, training in intercultural competency and cooperation with student support services. They develop learning environments to be inclusive, to value diversity and to challenge ethnocentrism, xenophobia and racism via the curriculum, pedagogy and structures (Mittelmeier et al. 2022, p. 4).

In order to move beyond “wishing and hoping” in IHE, Leask and Carroll (Reference Leask and Carroll2011) argue for higher education institutions to change three important aspects: align the formal and informal curricula, innovate learning activities so that they can be properly completed only with true intercultural interaction and provide teaching development to academic staff members. All three areas are the domain of faculty members. Educationalists concur, seeing academic teachers as important drivers of what and how students learn. For example, for Roxå (2018, p. 93), “change almost always starts with ordinary teachers changing their classes, which looks like small-scale… but also because of how the story is told and the innovation is evaluated, they illustrate in an excellent way how large-scale change starts. Of course, it takes time to make this happen, yet it is dependent on courageous, curious, and skilful innovators”.

A large study on internationalisation of higher education commissioned by the European Parliament foresaw that “a European higher education will emerge whose graduates will be able to contribute meaningfully as global citizens and global professionals in a Europe that is better placed not only to compete but also to cooperate” (de Wit et al. 2015, pp. 28–29). Yet, while in certain HE contexts professionals call for furthering the agenda of IHE to bring benefits to the wider community abroad (Jones et al. Reference Jones, Leask, Brandenburg and de Wit2021), in some parts of Europe, as illustrated in this article, internationalisation initiatives struggle to reach students as the main benefactors.

If international students have a very limited choice of courses in English and if these offer a negative learning experience, the number of international students at these institutions will remain low, no matter the quantity of available grants. In contrast, providing courses and short-term professional development activities for teaching staff members is not particularly costly, when compared for example to investment in infrastructure, but it can have a visible effect on students’ learning experiences. This may further more noticeably impact institutions outside the major cities that currently attract even fewer international students than the two universities featured here.

Overall, there are six states in the European Union that share Slovakia’s condition of many local students leaving to study abroad with few international students arriving to replace them. These are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania and Luxemburg (Table 3). For Luxemburg, this is probably due to reasons other than slow internationalisation, such as the country’s small size and the availability universities in neighbouring France and Germany. Unfortunately, we know very little about the contexts in these net senders, whether and why their higher education sectors possibly struggle with internationalisation. Data suggest that between 1991 and 2015, intra-EU immigration contributed to the significant population increase in western Member States at the expense of the eastern and southern members. The European Commission’s forecast, Population change 2015–2060 Central scenario, shows Lithuania, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Croatia among those countries at risk of losing most of their population and labour force due to intra EU-migration. Referring to the International Monetary Fund 2016 report and other sources, the study claims that this unusually large East–West emigration has had negative effects on the sending countries, in particular lower economic growth due to a loss of home-grown talent and innovation (Lutz 2019, pp. 47–48). A similar point is made by Lomer (Reference Lomer2017, p. 8), who notes that attracting international students may contribute to entrenching inequalities.

Table 3

European Union members with negative net flow of internationally mobile HE students.

Slovakia is not included. Bulgaria, Lithuania, Luxembourg have their inbound mobility rate increased recently, i.e. they attract more international students than before. All countries, except Lithuania, record in 2021 higher outbound mobility rates than in the past

Source: UNESCO UIS and Eurostat (2023)

Effective teaching for internationalisation

The studies in this symposium highlight the outcomes of a pilot programme introduced for 33 teaching faculty members from Comenius University Bratislava and Masaryk University. A two-year programme called ‘Effective teaching for internationalisation’ (ETI) was prepared in order to help teaching faculty members internationalise their student learning. The programme design built upon knowledge and experience derived from literature discussing effective approaches to the learning of international students and training teachers in facilitating the learning of diverse groups (Pleschová Reference Pleschová2020). During the programme, which had been accredited by the British Staff and Educational Association (SEDA), teachers first attended seven half-day workshops that provided them with foundational knowledge and skills related to the planning, facilitation and evaluation of courses and class sessions for international students. Then, each participant teacher worked with a coach, typically an academic developer, to integrate knowledge from the workshops into their teaching practice by introducing a teaching innovation specifically addressing the needs of international students.

In the later stages of the programme, participants collected data on the effects of their teaching innovations and evaluated them in a scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) study reflecting on the strengths of the teaching innovation and areas for future improvement. After the programme ended, graduates were invited to revise their studies and publish them in a book (Pleschová and Simon 2022). Ten chapters from UNIBA and MUNI teachers document that student learning can be internationalised with noticeable effects and this can be achieved by teachers willing and able to tailor their teaching to the needs of international students.

This symposium presents the results from the ETI programme that were achieved at the meso- and micro-levels. Despite the relatively short time period since the first cohort’s graduation, the programme has already influenced how some departments work and teach international students. The study by Simon and Pleschová shows how two programme graduates became grassroots leaders in promoting internationalisation and student-centred learning, clearly transforming their environments.

At the micro-level, the programme has had numerous effects on how international and home students learn in redesigned and newly designed courses. Another study from this symposium depicts an example of internationalising student learning in political science. The Cooperation and Conflict course attracted a diverse group of students from North and Central America, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South-East Asia. Despite of this variety of cultures and contexts, the students initially tended to avoid references to their home environments even if they offered many relevant cases to explore within the course themes. Instead, they stuck to the examples from the assigned materials, which typically presented Western perspectives. Internationalisation of this course implied giving the students incentives and ways to refer to their own context during academic debates and in position papers. As Chovančík explains, this aim was achieved, and the students together with an independent observer recognised the value of the new way of learning. The study concludes by identifying how student learning can be further improved in the future.

If readers are interested in more studies about internationalising classes, they can find a range of these at the open-access portal Internationalising teaching in higher education: Supporting peer learning (www.impactportal.eu). The portal includes works from both ETI programme participants and other teacher–scholars from a variety of other European HE institutions, for example, the Anglo-American University in Prague, Bard College Berlin, the Central European University, Lund University, the University of Coimbra and the University of Groningen. The website invites users to search for examples based upon the methods and concepts applied when internationalising classes and includes samples of internationalised class plans and course syllabi.