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1 INTRODUCTION
The increased flow of people, information and goods promoted by globalization, information, and communication technologies (ICTs) has increased access to and opportunities for interaction between people from different geographical and linguistic backgrounds and loci of enunciation. The diversity promoted by globalization often creates a clash between local and global values which affects and are affected by education in general as well as the process of internationalization of higher education.
In this scenario and in the realm of higher education, the tension between global and local values can be seen as relating to the need for a university to internationalize, or “glocalize,” in Patel and Lynch’s (2013) view, thus reacting to global forces while maintaining local identity and values. The process of internationalization of higher education (IHE) is often seen as both a consequence and an agent of globalization though researchers who look at this process through the lenses of critical epistemologies (FINARDI, 2019b, STEIN; ANDREOTTI, 2016) who tend to view globalization as a process that cannot be stopped while IHE can be at least directed or guided by critical action and reflection. Regarding the latter, the reflection on the process of IHE from two loci of enunciation represents the ultimate motivation for the present study.
In Brazil, the process of internationalization of higher education has occupied the agenda of most university stakeholders in the last decade and called the attention of researchers who claim for a more critical analysis of the process (JORDÃO, 2016). The Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) has a research group dedicated to studying the process of internationalization that has produced many studies (AMORIM, 2020, AMORIM; FINARDI, 2017, FINARDI; GUIMARÃES; MENDES, 2020, PICCIN; FINARDI, 2019, GUIMARÃES; FINARDI; CASOTTI, 2019, FINARDI, 2019c, GUIMARÃES; FINARDI, 2019, GIMARÃES, et al., 2019, FINARDI; GUIMARÃES, 2019, VIEIRA; FINARDI; PICCIN, 2018, FINARDI; AMORIM; KAWACHI, 2018). After the advent of the largest academic mobility program in the history of Brazil, the Science without Borders (SwB) program - which aimed at sending more than 100 thousand undergraduate Brazilian students in the STEM5 fields abroad - the washback effects can be seen in an array of other internationalization programs such as Languages without Borders (LwB) and, more recently, the Capes PrInt (FINARDI; ARCHANJO, 2018).
Because of the prominence of UFES as a hub to study the internationalization process in Brazil (see: a meta-analysis of studies in GUIMARÃES; FINARDI, 2020) and its recent academic agreement to collaborate with the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in the supervision of a dissertation tackling the process of internationalization of higher education, these two institutions with their respective advisors/advisees were selected as loci of enunciation for this study.
In the context of increased contacts between people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, language policies are called for to resolve conflicts that often arise from such contacts. Indeed, Grin (2003) warns us that conflict is bound to occur in contexts where more than one language co-exist calling for some kind of intervention in the form of language policy, seen as a reflection about the use of specific languages or genres in specific contexts (RAJAGOPALAN, 2013). In this study, we focus on language policies at UFES and at FAU as reflecting the institutional view of internationalization in those loci of enunciation.
The relevance of language to education (SPOLSKY, 2004), especially insomuch as the choice of a language as the medium of instruction, is a subject of great debate in multilingual/multicultural environments (RICENTO, 2006) and is closely related to language policies which in turn, affect and are affected by the process of the IHE (FINARDI; SANTOS; GUIMARÃES, 2016). Both UFES and FAU are in multilingual environments where the tension between which language or languages to use is reflected in overt and covert internationalization policies and actions.
According to Spolsky (2004), language policies are formed by language practices, language ideologies and efforts to modify/influence language practices in the form of intervention, planning and management. In Brazil, current official language policies, effective as of February 2017, determine that English is the only mandatory foreign language to be taught in schools, which threatens other foreign languages. This calls for alternatives to promote multilingualism and social inclusion of many language minorities groups who do not speak English as a foreign language or even Portuguese as native language (FINARDI, 2017).
Concerning the link between language policies and the process of IHE in Brazil, it is important to bear in mind that Portuguese is not as “popular” a language as is English or Spanish, thus making it difficult for Brazilian institutions to compete with Spanish or English-speaking universities to attract international scholars. As a result of this race (yes, because the process of IHE has become, in many ways, a race), Brazilian higher education institutions (HEI) place increasing pressure on scholars and professors to offer more courses in English (English Medium Instruction - EMI) as can be seen in the rise of EMI courses in Brazil in the two EMI Guides published in 20166 and two years later in 20187.
Another aspect reflected in internationalization views and actions is international agreements. According to Morosini (2011), international cooperation can serve as a window through which we can analyse the process of internationalization of a given institution or country as a whole. We believe that language policies and international agreements of a given institution represent evidence of the underlying views of internationalization in that context. Because of the close relationship between -- and mutual influence of -- language policies and international cooperation agreements, we will analyse the processes of internationalization at UFES and FAU from the perspective of their language policies and international agreements.
The link between language policies and the process of internationalization of higher education has already been established in the literature (FINARDI; SANTOS; GUIMARÃES, 2016) as the link between international cooperation and the view of IHE has been put forward by Morosini (2011). Having said that and considering Diniz de Figueiredo and Martinez’s (2019) invitation to expose our own loci of enunciation in order to localize knowledges that are often taken as global and universal, this study aims to reflect about the process of IHE in/of two different loci of enunciation, one in the Global South (UFES) and one in the Global North (FAU) through looking at the language policies and international agreements of UFES and FAU.
The first locus of enunciation is a public8 federal university in Brazil, which the Portuguese philosopher Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2007) incorporates in idea of the Global South (Federal University of Espírito Santo, UFES) whereas the second is a public university in the United States, which is seen as belonging to the Global North (Florida Atlantic University, FAU). It is important to highlight that the view of Global North and South is geopolitical, rather than geographical. Thus, we analyze language policies and international cooperation agreements formalized at UFES and at FAU as a window for reflection and analysis of the internationalization process.
2 MOTIVATIONS
According to Morosini (2011), the process of IHE can be understood in terms of models of international agreements. Morosini describes the Traditional International Cooperation Model - TIC -as being characterized by competitive relations between higher education institutions to attract individuals. Another model described by Morosini, originally proposed by Didriksson (2005) for international cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, is called the Horizontal International Cooperation - HIC model - based on solidarity and international awareness.
The HIC model opposes the TIC model and aims to strengthen the key components of the integration and articulation of subjects, institutions, agencies and resources to guarantee a shared horizontal cooperation that avoids replacing, altering or directing the local initiative seen in the TIC model. The development of one's own capacity or its local, sub-regional and regional empowerment should be the central objective of cooperation agreements in the HIC model. This means that local actors are responsible for the transformations needed to make their IHE process a more horizontal one (DIDRIKSSON, 2005).
The IHE highlights a strategy linked to globalization/regionalization with its impact on education. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2004) claims that what we see today is a process called transnationalization of higher education and that according to critical education perspectives, is a violent and competitive process (for example STEIN et al., 2016) that benefits the North more than the South (VAVRUS; PEKOL, 2015) and is only economically motivated once the attraction of foreign students aims to finance the host institution.
Indeed, Finardi and Ortiz (2015) analyzed the motivations to internationalize two higher education institutions in Brazil, one public and one private. Based on the assumption that, similarly to other European institutions, the process of IHE was motivated by the need to seek financial support in the form of fees from international students. The authors hypothesized that the private institution would be more engaged in the process of IHE than the public one. However, the results not only refuted this hypothesis, but also pointed to a completely different conclusion in relation to motivations to internationalize in Brazil. Considering the ratio of approximately 25% private versus 75% public higher education institutions in Brazil, the authors explained their unexpected results claiming that public institutions were more motivated to internationalize than private ones. Moreover, considering that public universities in Brazil are [still]9 completely free of charge, the authors claimed that the motivation of Brazilian public institutions to internationalize was predominantly academic rather than economic. Finardi and Ortiz (2015) explained the lack of motivation to internationalize private institutions in terms of the population in Brazil, a country with more than 210 million people where most of those who have access to higher education end up paying fees in a private institution thus making the “domestic market” comfortable for private institutions that do not need to seek international resources (in the form of foreign student fees).
Also, Piccin and Finardi (2019a) analyzed the conceptions of IHE in Brazil from the perspective of public servants of Federal Institutes (FI) located in the five geographic regions of Brazil. A semi-structured questionnaire was sent to all FI obtaining the feedback of 43 respondents, the majority of whom are from the Southeast region and from the state of Espírito Santo where the federal university in question, UFES analyzed it. In general, the qualitative analysis of the questionnaire data show that many of the conceptions of respondents are aligned with the misconceptions and myths about internationalization pointed out by de Wit (2011) and Knight (2011), although some of them express a certain epistemological movement that points to a transition towards a conceptualization of IHE closer to Knight’s model (2003). Though to a much lesser extent, some conceptions showed a more critical bias in relation to the curriculum, expressing the desire to emphasize local issues suggesting the need to decolonize the process of IHE.
In that sense, Piccin and Finardi (2019a) express the voices of authors working in the Global South (FINARDI, 2019a) and represent a valuable contribution to the inclusion of local (and Southern) voices of different loci of enunciations in the discussion. The present study analyzes the process of IHE in two institutions and through different loci of enunciation, one from the Global South (from Vitória, a city in the Southeast of Brazil) and one from the Global North (from Florida, a state in the Southeast of the USA).
It is important to analyze how institutions in these two countries are affected by the process of IHE. Lima and Maranhão (2009) describe the process of IHE in Brazil (and potentially also for other countries of the Global South) as being passive once it sends more students than it receives. Opposingly, Díaz (2018) states that universities around the world have been considerably affected by the steep decline in government funding thus looking at internationalization in the form of incoming international students to ensure their viability. Díaz goes on to explain that this complex educational landscape of internationalization is characterized by a strong ‘Anglophone asymmetry’ in which four English-speaking countries (the US, UK, Australia and Canada) account for over 50% of the incoming international students.
Apart from the reasons pointed in the literature above, the criteria to select the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) and the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) as the loci of our enunciations and the objects of this study relate to a convenience sample and wish to have an emic view of the process of IHE in those institutions. Also, the two first authors of this study work in these institutions where they are in charge of the PhD studies carried out by the third and fourth authors, respectively. Thus, to localize and question current views of IHE, we start by revealing our locus of enunciation in and from the South moving North, depicting, in a metaphoric way, the movement undergone by many Brazilian universities.
3 INTERNATIONALIZATION AT UFES
Amorim (2020) designed a self-assessment evaluation matrix to aid Brazilian higher education institutions (HEI) to assess their internationalization process. Amorim’s (2020) self-assessment matrix was piloted at UFES to validate the instrument. The assessment was made in multiple levels, one of which was language policy which in turn included the analysis of international cooperation agreements with institutions, most of which were from the Global North (SOUSA SANTOS, 2007).
In a previous study, but also at UFES, Finardi and Ortiz (2015) analyzed international agreements at UFES at the time of data collection showing about 60 active international agreements, and one major academic mobility program to send Brazilian undergraduate students abroad, namely, the Science without Borders (SwB) program. The authors also found two major academic mobility programs to receive international students at UFES, namely, the Program for Undergraduate Partner Students (PEC-G) and the PAEC-OEA, a program launched by the Organization of the American States and the Coimbra Brazilian Universities Group for post-graduate students. The incoming programs PEC-G and PAEC are focused on Portuguese-speaking partners (and to a lesser extent to Spanish-speaking partners) in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean and so they can be seen as focusing in attracting international students from the Global South whereas the SwB is focused in sending Brazilian students to universities mostly of the Global North.
A lot has changed in the last five years at UFES since Finardi and Ortiz (2015) carried out that study, especially as a result of the termination of the SwB program in 2017 and the change of focus from the undergraduate outbound mobility to the post-graduate focus today with the Capes PrInt10. Since 2019, when Amorim’s (2020) data were collected, UFES doubled the number of international agreements, boosting about 150 active international cooperation agreements with institutions from all continents, though still mostly from the Global North. A map available at UFES international office website11 portrays the concentration of UFES international agreements mostly with countries of the Global North.
As previously stated, we will analyze the IHE process at UFES taking into consideration two aspects: 1) language policies, as described in Guimarães and Finardi (2019) and 2) through cooperation agreements, as put forth by Morosini (2011). We will do so by accepting Diniz de Figueiredo and Martinez’s (2019) invitation (or provocation?) to consider our locus of enunciation as HEI from the Global South in an attempt to confront epistemological scholarly knowledge and, then, localize our knowledge(s). At this point, a caveat must be made to warn the reader that our attempt to localize our knowledge(s) might come in the form of more questions that foster further reflection rather than as finalized answers.
According to Guimarães, Finardi and Casotti (2019), there is a close relationship between language policies (LP) and internationalization plans/actions/policies. Indeed, we can see this relationship made evident at UFES in the creation of an international office with a language division as a result of the role of foreign languages in general and of English in particular in national internationalization programs and calls (FINARDI; SANTOS; GUIMARÃES, 2016). Evidence of language policies (both overt and covert) at UFES analyzed in Guimarães and Finardi (2019), Amorim (2020) and in Guimarães’ (2020) suggest that English has a prominent role in the IHE process of UFES because of its role as a lingua franca used to communicate with foreign academics. Portuguese as a foreign language (PFL) is also addressed by UFES language policies and actions but to a much lesser extent and only as it helps to attract international students with the [limited] support of PFL classes upon their arrival.
As becomes evident in the analysis of language policies at UFES and as previously stated here, Portuguese is not as competitive as English or Spanish and given that most international students at UFES come from the Global South, mostly from Portuguese speaking countries in Africa or Spanish speaking countries in Latin America, the minor importance given to PFL at UFES in comparison to English is evidence of the university’s passive model of internationalization (LIMA; MARANHÃO, 2009).
As mentioned in the introduction of this paper, the IHE in Brazil (and probably other parts of the globe) has become a race for government funding for HEI. If we analyze the more recent government-funded initiative, the Capes PrInt program, which called for HEI to officialize their internationalization plans expressing their language policy, we will see that the program had an inductive nature aimed at forcing institutions to elaborate internationalization plans and language policy documents. In what concerns the relationship between international agreements and language policies induced by this program at UFES, we will see how it corroborates the close link between international cooperation agreements and language policies suggested by Guimarães, Finardi and Casotti (2019).
The Capes PrInt Call provided a list of selected countries with which agreements should be signed12, 70% of which belonged to the Global North while only 30% from the Global South. That meant that the majority of funds would continue to go to the same hegemonic countries, leaving less chance for HEI from the Global South to stand out. For this and other reasons, the Brazilian IHE process has been called reactive (RAMOS, 2018; GUIMARÃES; FINARDI, 2019), passive (LIMA; MARANHÃO, 2009) and part of colonial heritage (STRECK; ABBA, 2018).
As much as the instrument that Amorim (2020) proposed aimed for a more comprehensive approach to internationalization (HUDZIK, 2011), including indicators that assess, and hopefully orient, HEI to design language policies that encompass multiple languages and agreements with countries from both the Global North and South, this is not a reality in most HEI in Brazil, certainly not at UFES. Perhaps, because HEI are still strongly affected by national programs (and funding stemming from them) which in turn portray a colonized view of the process of IHE, they seem to continue, rather than question, the status quo of IHE in Brazil.
As a way to raise their voices against these tides, theorists from different areas and countries (Boaventura de Sousa Santos in Portugal and Sharon Stein in Canada, for example and to give but two tokens from the Global North) and in particular many Brazilian Applied Linguists and Educators, have started to question the status quo of the process of IHE suggesting to go beyond the criticism of the process of IHE to propose a more critical process of IHE (ANDREOTTI et al., 2016; MENEZES DE SOUZA, 2015; FINARDI, 2019c).
The matrix designed by Amorim (2020) also addressed international cooperation agreements at multiple levels and with universities both from the Global South and the Global North. However, and as has become evident in the map cited previously and in Amorim’s (2020) data, most international agreements at UFES are oriented towards the North. What we still see reflected in UFES’ internationalization plan is a reaction made evident in its international agreements, expressed in the form of trying to meet the requirements of public calls and programs (such as the SwB and the Capes Print), so as to be eligible for the funds coming with the accreditation in these calls/programs.
This orientation (North) is also confirmed in a previous study (AMORIM; FINARDI, 2017) which analyzed the internationalization process at UFES in three levels. At the macro level the authors analyzed national internationalization programs and policies, at the meso level they analyzed UFES internationalization programs, policies and international agreements and at the micro level the academic community of UFES was heard to see what individuals thought about the IHE in that institution. Results of Amorim and Finardi (2017) show that the wants and needs of the academic community, predominantly in internationalization, is not concerned with institutional or national policies/actions. Moreover, it showed that the internationalization policies/actions are neither aligned nor convergent in those three levels at UFES.
Thus, the scenario at UFES raises many questions in terms of the reflection proposed in this study. Some of these questions point to the need to re-examine language policies and international agreements. How can we participate in government-funded internationalization calls/programs without losing sight of our wish for a more critical internationalization process in regards to language policy and international cooperation agreements? How can we move from TIC to HIC models of internationalization? How can we foster critical thinking in relation to the internationalization process in our locus of enunciation?
Streck and Abba (2018) claim that one of the central points when elaborating an internationalization policy is “the search for clarity as to what internationalization means for each context” (p. 1-2). The authors also call attention to the fact that Latin American researchers have high productivity rates though they are not recognized or cited by their Latin peers. Indeed, in a study that looked at the national academic production in 2016, Finardi and França (2016) highlighted the fact that though Brazil had the 13th largest scientific production in the world then, it was not ranked accordingly in terms of impact of their academic production globally, most probably because of the language in which the studies are published.
This claim corroborates Diniz de Figueiredo and Martinez’s (2019) instigation about epistemological scholarly knowledge and their invitation (and also provocation, in our view) for us to reveal ourselves. But how can we reveal ourselves without reflecting about what internationalization means for us first? What do our translated internationalization policies and strategies tells us? What sort of knowledge(s) are we (from the Global South) revealing and/or hiding in relation to our internationalization process?
What does the future hold? Sharon Stein (2017) addresses the uncertainty of the future with tensions, paradoxes and possibilities, and points to the higher education arena as a space to have critical, open-ended conversations about alternative futures. Despite Stein’s (2017) decolonial approaches to the internationalization agenda, which seemingly resonates across the Global South, we should be asking ourselves (these two authors from the Global South most definitely included) if we surreptitiously (or not?) continue to neglect our peers for hearing what contributions they can bring to the table. Again, we ask ourselves, what kind of internationalization(s) are we aiming for?
4 INTERNATIONALIZATION AT FAU
Located in South Florida, FAU capitalizes on its weather and natural beauty to attract international students. According to the Institute for International Education (IEE) (2019) there are over 45,000 international students in Florida, which places it as the seventh most sought-after state for international students and generates over $1.5 billion of international student expenditure in the state. At FAU there were 911 international students registered for the Fall 2019 semester (FAU International Services, n.d.). The top five countries of origin of students at FAU are Brazil, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, while, statewide, Brazil is the fourth most common country of origin for international students. In comparison, Brazil only ranks 26th as the destination for U.S. students going abroad, behind its South American neighbors Ecuador (16th), Peru (19th), Argentina (22nd), and Chile (25th). (IEE, 2019).
The agreements FAU keeps with partnering institutions are classified as Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), Reciprocal Student Exchange, Co-op Student Exchange, Faculty or Scholar Exchange, Joint Research, and Technical Assistance and Training Services. MOUs are statements of interest between FAU and a partnering institution and are used to explore research interests, exchange projects and academic activities between the institutions; Reciprocal Student Exchange agreements aim at creating opportunities for FAU students to “trade places” with students from another institution for a period of time outlined in the agreement between institutions; Co-op Student Exchange agreements are one-way agreements that result in FAU hosting students based on a J-1 work-and-study visitor visa; Faculty or Scholar Exchange is the temporary exchange of scholars for teaching purposes; Joint Research agreements outline research cooperation, costs of research, and publication and intellectual property rights between the partnering institutions; and, Technical Assistance and Training Services agreement defines terms and conditions for technical assistance and training at one or more partners participating in the agreement (FAU Education Abroad, 2019).
Given its privileged position in the Global North and as an English-speaking institution, FAU enforces a policy of demanding English proficiency tests (TOEFL, IELTS, CELA, PTE, or DET) from international students coming from countries where English is not the only official language. Students who do not meet the language requirements may be conditionally admitted to FAU and placed in the Intensive English Institute, a language program designed to increase student proficiency in English while taking transitional classes that may count as credits towards the student’s degree. Besides the Intensive English Institute, FAU only offers select classes in foreign languages for students majoring in Spanish, French, or Italian.
FAU, like most public universities in the USA, relies on government funding to cover a considerable part of its operation costs. The race for funding at FAU translates into investment in marketing campaigns to attract students, building structures that are not essential for courses and administration - for example the e-sports arena that will make FAU “the first public university in Florida to have a competitive sports gaming center” (RODRIGUEZ, 2019) - and more aggressively on the importance given to rankings in deciding which institutions receive funds based on metrics like graduation and development of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) projects. In this scenario, funding becomes a reward (or punishment) for universities, who must be able to demonstrate how investment in educational practices are transformed into results that can be expressed as rankings (SILVA; MARI, 2017). Another important source of income for FAU is the tuition paid by students, which is much higher for international and non-Florida resident students.
FAU classifies students as Florida residents as those who have lived in Florida for at least 12 months prior to registration, and Non-Florida residents, those who have lived in Florida for less than 12 months prior to registration. Given their temporary permanence in the country defined by their student visas, international students are not eligible to pay resident tuition even after the minimum of 12 months residence in state. Thus, international students pay a much higher tuition for the entire duration of their programs, unless they change their status to that of a permanent resident alien or receive a scholarship that allows them to pay in-state tuition. The cost of tuition for Fall 2019 can be seen in the table below. (FAU Financial Aid, n.d.).
Table 1: Cost of tuition for Fall 2019
| Undergraduate Students | Graduate Students | |
|---|---|---|
| Florida Resident | $201.29 (per credit) | $369.82 (per credit) |
| Non-Florida Resident | $719.84(per credit) | $1024.81 (per credit) |
Source: FAU Financial Aid (n.d.)
The IIE (2019) points out that 57% of the international students in the USA rely on family and personal funds and nearly 17% receive scholarship from their institutions. These numbers not only show that, as Silva and Mari stated (2017) higher education became a product to be commercialized, in this case a premium price, but also that universities are willing to attract the best students by means of financial support, which contributes to the phenomenon of brain drain.
FAU develops strategies to attract international students, creates partnerships with foreign institutions, offers assistance and training in foreign institutions and at home and promotes the exchange of scholars, especially in areas of strategic interests (e.g., STEM). For these reasons, FAU is an actor engaged in a process of internationalization that is active (LIMA; MARANHÃO, 2009) and inductive (GUIMARÃES; FINARDI, 2019) since it outlines language policies that favor the institution. Moreover, it is based on TIC, marked by competition among higher education institutions to attract international students (MOROSINI 2011) under the guise of promoting multiculturalism and diversity on campus without necessarily creating opportunities for students to engage in meaningful interaction with one another (SHAW, 2015).
It becomes especially challenging and equally important to reflect on an institution’s loci of enunciation when it is in the privileged position of being part of the Global North and reap the benefits of internationalization. For instance, why would FAU design a language policy to offer courses in foreign languages when English has taken the role of an academic lingua franca? Why would curriculum at FAU include emerging voices from different areas of the globe when the traditional academic canon has been thoroughly translated to English? Why would faculty be encouraged to produce academic work in different languages when local ranking is based on publication in English journals? These are questions that few administrators and faculty at FAU are able to respond to, not only because they demand complex answers, but also because of the burden imposed by accreditation agencies and government demands that impact workload and budget decisions.
Internationalization efforts at FAU are seen in the development of different partnerships with different institutions, higher tuition for international students, a language policy that demands testing fluency in English language, and improving FAU’s position in academic rankings like Forbes’ America’s Top Colleges and US News Rankings’ Best National Universities. However, it is important to highlight that certain colleges and departments have multicultural faculty, and some faculty who include a critical perspective in their research, teaching, and thinking about internationalization and the education of international students. It is also important to highlight that while FAU is part of the Global North, it is also consumed and controlled by rankings that make or break the reputation of universities using unclear criteria to define which institutions deserve the higher spots, and ultimately how competitive institutions will be for prospective students and government funding. These policies that rank universities perpetuate elite schools privilege since higher positions attract more students, more government funding, and more endowments that come from former students, while leaving the universities that do not make the top of the ranking in less prestigious positions and in difficult circumstances since they do not seem as attractive to students who base their choices on how prestigious the university is.
Perhaps it is necessary that FAU confronts its internationalization strategies with the question “what do we seek in internationalization policies at FAU?” FAU has the privilege of being an English-speaking institution and being located on the desirable Florida coast. FAU attracts students from all over the world willing to pay a much higher tuition than their Florida-resident counterparts, a policy that is often defended by those who believe public money should not be invested in foreign students, but also criticized since it becomes an immediate reflex of the commodification of education and treats international students as “cash-cows” for universities (VAN DAMME, 2017). Also, we agree with Garcia’s (2015) position that the difficulty in establishing education programs for highly linguistically diverse populations “is precisely the reliance on two or more autonomous language systems” (p.150). However, all things considered, how meaningful has internationalization at FAU been? We do not aim to naively call for several courses being offered in several languages, but we would like to include in the discussion of FAU’s loci of enunciation by asking the reader to imagine the potential of a more comprehensive language policy in furthering the relevance of FAU to its community and partnerships.
Rethinking internationalization goals and language policies at FAU would give the academic community the opportunity to engage in fruitful partnerships and truly reap the benefits that come with the presence of international students and go far beyond better rankings and higher tuition. The question, then becomes: is FAU ready to look critically at its privileged position, and find ways to redesign and re-signify its internationalization plan?
5. CONCLUSION
The impetus for internationalization for UFES, a public institution in Brazil, and FAU, a public institution in Florida, USA, varies widely, with differences informed by geo/political and funding pressures. Whereas IHE initiatives propelling Brazilian HEIs like UFES into international partnerships are arguably formulated to increase collaboration and knowledge building, internationalization serves a different purpose for institutions in the U.S. such as FAU, which may equate internationalization to increased international student enrollment and seek this out primarily for financial and academic gain. Moreover, HEIs in Brazil face a number of unique factors and pressures when engaging in partnerships for internationalization purposes in comparison to the partnering institution in the U.S.
In terms of language, the implicit expectation for all communication and interaction between professors and students at UFES and FAU seems to be that these take place in English only, rather than in a mix of English and Portuguese (using, for example the intercomprehension approach as suggested by Finardi, 2019c) or Portuguese alone or still other foreign languages in common such as Spanish. This reality highlights the bias towards English, and the privileging of U.S. and other English-speaking institutions which engage in such partnerships.
In what concerns degrees of engagement, there are plans for UFES professors and students to visit the U.S. to engage with partners at FAU but no current plans for FAU to follow suit at UFES in Brazil. The discrepancy in FAU’s degree of engagement originates not from lack of interest, but lack of funding made available for internationalization initiatives in public U.S. institutions. Professors at FAU seeking to engage in internationalization efforts are encouraged to apply for external funding, however, federal and private grants supporting this type of collaboration are difficult to find and garner outside of individual shorter-term stipends (e.g., Fulbright scholarships). The lack of available funding to support internationalization efforts for FAU faculty serves as an important indicator that (a) the university’s priorities lie elsewhere, and (b) that when it comes to internationalization, FAU seeks to gain liquidity from enrolling international students rather than invest in international exchange programs for its faculty and students.
As becomes evident in the aforementioned conclusion, the UFES-FAU partnership is restricted to the funding and availability of UFES participants to travel to FAU, limiting the benefits that FAU participants could have to speak other languages and learn from participants at UFES in Brazil while burdening UFES with inequitable financial obligations in sustaining the exchange portion of the collaboration. These examples from the UFES-FAU partnership present further evidence of de Sousa Santos’ (2004) claim that internationalization of higher education is more beneficial and more accommodating to the North (FAU) than to the South (UFES).
This tension/coalition is reinforced through the international cooperation agreements signed mostly with HEI in the Global North and, as consequence, language policies designed to suit or accommodate them. So, from our loci of enunciation (a university in the Global South and another one in the Global North), it is time to listen to the voices of the Global South. Voices that recognize and acknowledge the power of the Global North, but also value local knowledges and the potential of the Global South.
Despite these common pitfalls that are well-documented in the literature (e.g., PEKOL, 2015; STEIN et al., 2016), the partnership for internationalization forged by UFES and FAU is created on the basis of the authors’ shared interest, commitment, and critical approach towards the outcome of internationalization for HEIs, and to help improve and realize the potential of such international collaborations by example. Regardless of the financial and geo/political challenges in place, we move forward in exploring the potential of internationalization for our institutions, challenging linguistic and geopolitical biases and privileges, and forging inroads for shifting from TIC to HIC.
What is to take of this and how can we go about it? There are certainly fruitful unfolding possibilities from these relationships and that do not include a boycott to the Global North or to the government-funded calls/programs for that matter and when it comes to the process of IHE. That would be naïve and restrictive, with the only difference that the restriction would go in a different direction. Instead, we propose more inclusive and balanced relations among all players. We further propose that these relations are seen through multiple dimensions de-emphasizing the hegemony of the Global North and of the English language without demeaning the value of either in the process of IHE. The question, then, becomes: are we ready to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk?
We end by sharing some of the questions raised by Amorim (2020) and that motivate us to blaze the trail ahead inviting others to do the same in an effort to push the field forward: why should we internationalize? Why should we assess and reflect about the internationalization process in our institutions? To whom is the institutional internationalization agenda going to serve/benefit? To what extent are we reinforcing an unequal relationship in terms of our internationalization plans/actions? Is our internationalization plan imposed in a top-down fashion? What are the possible avenues for a more critical internationalization process?
