Page 5 - The-Academic-value-of-mobility-2018

Foreword

For a good while now, the internationalisation of higher education has largely
focused on mobility, in Sweden and in other comparable countries. Mobility has
been a central element of the efforts to create the European Higher Education
Area as part of the Bologna Process. The ministerial meeting of 2009 established
the target that 20 per cent of people who graduate in 2020 will have spent a
period abroad as part of their education, a target that has also been adopted by
the EU.

In recent years, work on internationalisation at higher education institutions has
been increasingly based on the insight that internationalisation contributes to
improving the quality of their own activities – at all levels. The government’s
Internationalisation Inquiry also established in its interim report, En strategisk
agenda för internationalisering (SOU 2018:3 – Internationalisation of Swedish
Higher Education and Research – A Strategic Agenda) that internationalisation is
so complex that it requires integration and coordination. This conclusion is also
drawn in this report. If mobility is placed in a context, it can lead to higher quality
for outward students. In order for internationalisation to reach all students, issues
surrounding how education is conducted and organised need to be discussed in
parallel and placed in relationship to the higher education institution’s strategies
or profile.

The report by the Swedish Council for Higher Education (UHR) is the result of
a project that was funded by the European Commission, with the Ministry of
Education and Research as its principal. It contains recommendations for increas-
ing outward student mobility. The project has been run by UHR with the sup-
port of representatives from higher education institutions, the Swedish National
Union of Students, the Swedish Higher Education Authority and the Association of
Swedish Higher Education Institutions. A particularly significant effort has been
made by the representatives of the pilot projects conducted at seven higher
education institutions. They have tested the project’s recommendation in prac-
tice and thus made comprehensive contributions to the project’s results. Project
coordinators and the report’s authors are Anders Ahlstrand and Annika Ghafoori,
analysts at UHR.

The hope is that UHR’s report will provide inspiration through good examples for
developing internationalisation work at Sweden’s higher education institutions.

Karin Röding
Director-General
Swedish Council for Higher Education

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