Internationalization of Indonesian Higher Education

: Academics’ perceptions of the impacts of overseas study programs

Abstract

Internationalization of Higher Education has been a prominent issue in Indonesian education. Universities across the country have put efforts into internationalizing their campuses. One of their strategies is conducting overseas study programs for academics. This thesis explores academics' perceptions of the impacts of overseas study programs in one of the public universities in Indonesia. It is an exploratory single-site case study involving 16 participants with master and Ph.D. degrees from overseas universities. Data comprised semi-structured interviews, which were thematically analyzed.
The thesis explores perceptions of the impacts of overseas study programs as an internationalization strategy, the contributions of returning overseas graduates to their institutions, and the complementarity of overseas study programs to university internationalization. The findings indicate that overseas studies have positively impacted the human capital as related to teaching, research, networking, self-confidence, and foreign language proficiency. However, the findings also reveal that upon returning from the overseas studies, participants fail to apply their new proficiencies to the benefit of their institutions due to the limitations of human resources and institutional policies, inadequate technological apparatus, and cultural aversion, in the Indonesian context, to criticality.
Utilizing reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2019; Brule, 2020; Byrne, 2022), the thesis shows that despite strong aspirations to become World Class Universities (WCU), the university, as the research context, has much work to develop its human resources, technological infrastructures, and relevant supporting policies, before implementing internationalization agenda and aiming to achieve its goal to be a World Class University (WCU). The research also claims that the internationalization agenda set up by Indonesian universities, which is about reforming their institutions according to global university rankings, are problematic for universities' development, stakeholders, and national education. Most importantly, the research makes another crucial claim that overseas study programs are impactful for developing participants' academic capital but ineffective in supporting the development of university internationalization.
This research is significant since the inquiries on the impacts of overseas studies are commonly fragmented into two discrete foci: the impacts on the participating academics and the contributions of returnees to their home institutions. Therefore, this research that investigates the impacts of the studies on the participating academics and their contributions to their institution presents a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of overseas studies. Theoretically, this research challenges the traditional understanding of Human Capital Theory (HCT) (Marginson, 2019; Marshal, 1920, as quoted by Tan, 2014), which suggests that overseas study programs are good investments for universities in terms of the potential contributions of returnees to their home institutions. In practice, the research contributes to the development of the university internationalization agenda by presenting necessary steps universities can take to accommodate the contributions of overseas graduating academics to developing the internationalization agenda.

Date of Award	23 Jan 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	E V Washbrook (Supervisor) & Richard P Watermeyer (Supervisor)