E s s a y

Another-equally instrumental-rationale for recruiting foreign students was the desire to get more exchange opportunities to Finnish students in the EC programs based on reciprocity. Although most of the interviewees mentioned the need to attract more foreigners, only a few of them saw incoming exchange students as having a positive impact on the cultural or academic climate of the department. All in all, the internationalization of teaching was regarded as an external pressure to the university, as internationality of research was endogenous. Cooperation had in some cases spread from joint research projects to student exchange, while the opposite was never the case.


Internationalization as a Status Asset

In addition to academic and personal/cultural development, international contacts were regarded as valuable in providing the staff involved, a welcome break from the daily routines. One further benefit from internationalization was the enhancement of the status and external image of the department. Some interviewees confessed spontaneously that this was an Important rationale for internationalization. They expressed a fear that a department without international contacts would be at a disadvantage concerning the allocation of resources and possibly even face the threat of closing down or amalgamation to other units: ". . . It certainly does have an instrumental value, too, I think that Finnish institutions will not fare well in the competition just by staying strictly domestic..."

However, the status value of internationalization was revealed perhaps most clearly through the interviewees' enthusiasm to stress the international character of their respective disciplines. Almost all respondents from literary studies to theoretical physics wanted to point out how their field is and always has been "inherently international."

It is obvious that enhanced status was the prevalent reason for international activities also in those departments, where no clear reason for striving for internationalization could be pointed out. On the contrary, international contacts were seen as causing a great deal of extra work, in some cases even interfering with the research and teaching activities of the person concerned.Peculiarly, staff and especially student exchanges were regarded as somehow valuable in themselves, as carrying a positive "absolute value." The approach to internationalization was visibly unplanned and reactive in these cases.

Interestingly, professional skills or labor market qualifications were not mentioned spontaneously by any of the interviewees. This is puzzling, when one remembers the prevalent labor market orientation behind most of the EC programs. This was, however, not the logic of student mobility absorbed by the academics. Rather, the staff was trying to consolidate the new active pursuit for internationalization with the traditional logic of universities, international contacts resulting "functionally" from research needs.

It can be concluded, therefore, that internationalization of Finnish higher education currently takes place in a cross-pressure of two models. On the one hand there is the "old school," who believe in research-driven cooperation and take a skeptical-or even amused-view to new "programmed internationalism" or "fashionable internationalism."

On the other hand there are those who believe strongly in the centrally coordinated cooperation, boosted by the European Community. They see the institutionalized approach of large networks and growing student flows as more efficient and predictable.

Only time will show how the relation of these two models will develop. Yet one thing is certain: the variety of different meanings, needs, and hopes attached to internationalization in the universities will pose great demands on the dialogue between different parties involved, between teachers and researchers and the international coordinators. It is this dialogue-or rather the lack of it-that we turn to now.


Conflicts between Different Personnel Groups

The interviewees often remarked that international activities of the department have recently grown more coordinated and planned, thanks to the infrastructure of international operations. The overall attitude toward hired international coordinators and secretaries was positive. Yet there are some conflicts between central administrative offices of the university and the departments.

Some teachers and researchers were irritated by the "structural power that central administration holds over the departments, due to the resources and information it controls. In addition, quite a few of them complained that deadlines are too tight and that too much time is wasted in reporting plans and activities to the international office. "The administration" was also seen as wasting resources that should be designated to teaching and research. This was linked to lack of manpower in the departments. One professor-who was also a member of the university's executive board for international affairs-commented critically: "The administration certainly isn't up to its tasks here. They develop their own-self-generated-events for themselves. The administrative personnel attends these events and meetings and doesn't even distribute information to us. This is insane from the point of view of the whole: the university is after all an institution of highest academic education and research, not an institution devoted to administration. This matter should be taken under serious discussion at once: the situation is deteriorating from day to day."

The prevalent view was that the creation of international contacts must be left either to departments as a whole or to individual academics. An informal contact between two researchers was still seen as the cornerstone of all international operations. As for the role of central administration, some recognized its help as useful in the search for funding, assistance in administrative work, and dissemination of information. A more critical view was taken by those who argued that "the administration" would be of greatest help in keeping out of the way!

From the point of view of centralized, strategic planning of international operations, the situation is not encouraging. Although it is understandable that in written strategies of internationalization-drafted by the international offices-giving greater resources to administration is recommended, some teachers and researchers see the order of priorities quite differently. Only two of our interviewees thought that some administrative organ is the most important developer of international cooperation.


Discussion and Two Theoretical Standpoints

Drawing a clear overall picture of the meanings attached to internationalization is not easy. On the departmental level, several, even counteracting forces characterized the situation, In the faculty of mathematics and natural sciences, for example, several persons assured that their discipline is international by its very nature: via its globally uniform research topics and methodologies. Yet international cooperation had somehow "intensified" or "become more coordinated" over recent years. Hence, the potential of the discipline for international cooperation could somehow be taken advantage of better than before. However, now the funding available for internationalization was diminishing and bureaucratic obstacles were proliferating.

Burton Clark (I 984a, 1984b) has described the peculiarities of university as an organization with his Master Matrix Model. According to Clark, teachers and researchers are simultaneously members of several systems (of a professional group, of a specific organization, of the research community of their own specialization). Academics are tied by numerous reference groups and institutions. Some of these are local, others global, some formal, others completely informal.

As a result of these cross-tensions, resulting from multiple loyalties, the university as an organization is a battlefield of several overlapping interest groups. In Clark's opinion, the university is much like a federation: it is characterized by several hierarchically ordered layers, which nevertheless interpenetrate and blend into each other. In addition, decision making on one level has to take into account the others. The crucial question is achieving a coherent, strategic action while respecting the relative autonomy and sovereignty of each level.

As a more abstract example, Pierre Bourdieu's concept field can meaningfully be used to describe internationalization of an academic organization. Put bluntly, all human life can, according to Bourdieu, be described as series of competitions for prestige or other alms. This competition takes place on different fields, which are hierarchically ordered "battlegrounds" of different people, equipped with different strategies and portfolios of different forms of capital. In addition to economic capital, people possess, for exam- pie, varying amounts of linguistic capital (prestigious modes of speech) and social capital (advantageous social networks and acquaintances). These forms of capital are also interchangeable on "rates of exchange" that vary from one field to another. The forms of capital and the working logic of the field define each other.

For "the game to be played," the "players," have to recognize well enough both the rules applied and the relative value of each form of capital on that specific field. They cooperate in upholding trust in the game. How- ever, players simultaneously also battle over the legitimate definitions of rules and the relative values of forms of capital (see, for example, Bourdieu 1993, 72-77; Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992, 13-14, 94-115).

These theoretical views help to understand the variety of meanings and interests attached to international educational cooperation. One very clear aspect of internationalization was its role in boosting the status of the department concerned. Departments and individual academics compete with their "Internationalization," although the nature of international cooperation and resulting benefits to participating persons and units would be perceived differently. At the same time, teachers and researchers strive to establish their own "mode of internationalization" as the legitimate one. Yet everyone cooperates in upholding the belief that internationalization in one form or another is desirable.

It should be clear that these struggles of definition do not take place only among academics. As has already been mentioned, one of the main rationales of the EC international programs has been to enhance future mobility of labor force and the university graduates' job prospects. The idea is to train a growing cadre of employees, who have experience in living in another European country. It is expected that this will gradually lubricate the moving of labor force in the single market. However, most academics have not adopted this logic for the programs. Rather, the programs were treated as vehicles for achieving academic excellence through mobility.

To add to the confusion, both Finnish and international studies show that neither of these reasons is the most important one for mobile students. On the contrary, the most prominent reasons for participating in exchange are hopes for linguistic improvement and desire to live in another country and thus become acquainted with its people. These are also commonly regarded as the most worthwhile benefits afterwards (see, for example, Opper, Teichler & Carlson 1990, 204; Teichler & Steube 1991, 333, 342; Mai- worm, Steube & Teichler 1991, 162-163). It is clear, that these cross-cut- ting interests pose great challenges for future cooperation.



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