Understanding internationalisation of Higher Education in the era of Covid-19

Abstract

It is no longer news the high level of devastation caused by the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the world. While COVID-19 is truly a global pandemic, its impact on the internationalisation of higher education (HE) has not been felt equally and evenly across the globe. It has increased inequality, exclusion, discrimination, and global unemployment considerably and this might be devastating in the long run. Apart from causing  major disruptions to teaching, learning and experimental research, it has also adversely affected many internationalisation activities of universities, most notably regarding the mobility of students and staff. The aim of this study was to help shape our understanding of how the international education enterprise in South Africa is being affected by these developments, and it also focused on the impact of COVID-19 on internationalisation of HE and how the adverse effect could be circumvented. Using qualitative methods to analyse available secondary data, this study investigated the impact of the pandemic on different aspect of internationalisation of HE ranging from educating global citizens, building capacity for research, generating income from international student tuition fees, the quest to enhance institutional prestige, mobility, internationalisation at home,  international research and others. The analysis of the data was done using critical discourse analysis model which allows the study of three levels of discourse namely text, process, and social context. In conclusion, the study reveals that there is need to set long term and sustainable strategies as
the means to prevent the negative effect of COVID-19 on HE, establish new ways of delivering internationalisation to preserve its benefits and closing the inequality gaps in HE.

Keywords: internationalisation, COVID-19, higher education, inequalities, blended learning