Competing Motivations in Germany’s Higher Education Response to the “Refugee Crisis”

In 2015–16 Germany was confronted with over 1 million new refugees, which challenged public and private institutions alike and increasingly divided public sentiments. This article investigates the cultural, political, and economic dynamics as they were in Germany in 2015–16 and in particular how its higher education sector responded. The discussion covers a comprehensive review of media debates, public and private institutional research, new German- and English-language scholarship, and case studies the authors collected of fiffeen universities. The article ends with recommendations as German universities prepare for 30,000–50,000 refugees eligible for study in the coming years. En 2015-2016, l’Allemagne a fait face à plus de 1 million de nouveaux réfugiés, ce qui a remis en question les institutions publiques et privées et généré des sentiments de plus en plus divisés de la part du public. Cet article explore les dynamiques économiques, politiques et culturelles telles qu’elles se présentaient en Allemagne ces années-là, et en particulier la réaction de son enseignement supérieur. La discussion porte sur un examen exhaustif des débats médiatiques, de la recherche institutionnelle publique et privée, des nouvelles bourses d’études pour apprendre l’allemand ou l’anglais, et d’études de cas colligées par les auteurs dans 15 universités. L’article se termine sur des recommandations, alors que les universités allemandes se préparent à accueillir de 30 000 à 50 000 réfugiés admissibles aux études dans les années à venir.&nbsp

Emerging Decolonialized Research Collaboration: The Max Planck Society and the Leibniz Association in Latin America

Analyzing the number of publications and proportion of corresponding authors of Latin American scholars and scholars from the German Max Planck Society (MPS) and the Leibniz Association (LA; 1954–2018), this article asks if North–South partnerships continue to represent power imbalances. Our bibliometric analysis indicates that (a) in comparison with the LA, the MPS’s scientists published more articles with Latin American countries, led by Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico; (b) researchers from the MPS and the LA frequently took the role of corresponding author; (c) researchers from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico primarily controlled their region’s productivity, but (d) Brazil built its own multinational research networks; and (e) countries with less productivity, such as Colombia and Uruguay, are on peripheries of research networks. Our findings indicate that the decolonial perspective needs further development to identify multipolar relationships of dominance and collaboration have developed out of a dichotomy world of North–South relations

Needs, Barriers, and Support Systems for Refugee Students in Germany

This paper details the results of a study of 25 students of refugee background (SoRB) from Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan at two technical universities of applied sciences in Berlin who were participating in preparatory courses to matriculate or were already engaging in their first semesters of study. The research shares what these refugee students feel they need in order to succeed in German higher education, and what they see as barriers. The data are organized around Baker, Ramsay, Irwin and Mile’s (2017) analytical framework of hot (familiar-informal), warm (familiar-formal) and cold (unfamiliar-formal) sources of support. This study is relevant at a time of both a massification of participation in higher education leading to greater student diversification and the development of more holistic support for all students, and an increasing mood of political agitation in countries traditionally open to migration

Higher Education in an Era of Violent Extremism: Exploring Tensions Between National Security and Academic Freedom

Security, terrorism, and radicalization are related topics that are rarely discussed in the study of international education. To fill this gap, this study investigated how the higher education sector in the European Community, including Turkey, has engaged with numerous counter-radicalization strategies. Through a survey of 18 available policy documents and a focus on the UK’s Prevent Strategy and the EU’s Radicalization Awareness Network Guidance (RAN), along with a qualitative investigation of publicly available information from 24 universities, this study demonstrates that national security policies rarely provide recommendations to institutions of higher education for the prevention of radicalization leading to violent extremism. Findings point to the conclusion that universities are either unenthusiastic or resistant to complying with top-down, government issued directives for countering student radicalization. We recommend that communication methods between policy-makers and university administrators be reconsidered for the greater protection of students and their wider communities

Access for Refugees into Higher Education: Paving Pathways to Integration

The 2015–2016 refugee crisis in Germany has made its universities more aware of the student services that it must provide for all of its students, not just new refugee entrants once they overcome asylum application, credentialing, and placement hurdles to access or continue university studies. A newly published study by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has provided evidence-based findings that showcase how the country is monitoring the process of refugee access to higher education, and offers important lessons for other countries facing refugee and migrant inflows

The Scholar-Practitioner Debate in International Higher Education

This discussion looks at the role and potential of a growing class of professionals at U.S. colleges and universities today: scholar-practitioners or alternative-academics. Scholar-practitioners are products of a changing higher education landscape where core faculty lines are declining while contract and adjunct positions are growing in tandem with the proliferation of specialized campus services.  For hybrid scholar-practitioners of international higher education, opportunities exist to leverage their exposure to data and experiential knowledge in order to broaden and deepen the discussion in an enterprise increasingly attracting significant research attention.

Research on Study Abroad, Student and Staff Mobility, and Student Exchange in Comparative Education Scholarship

For many years there has been research on study abroad, student and staff mobility and international student exchange, however in the last two decades the volume and scope of this work has increased significantly. By now there are specific academic journals, a host of new books each year, expansive reports by international research organizations, and an increasing number of annual conferences that are all publishing on trends and issues related to this phenomenon. Yet surprisingly, in the comparative education scholarship much of this research still appears relatively infrequently in its main journals. This paper examines the seeming contradiction of, on the one hand, more student, staff and institutional participation in worldwide international education each year and new research accompanying this trend and, on the other hand, the relative scarcity of reflection on this activity in the core comparative education journals. In this article we take stock of international education themed research that has appeared in the past in a selection of comparative education journals, share the advice of the editors of these journals to future authors seeking to submit research on these areas, and conclude with our own reflections on the future nexus of scholarship in international education and comparative education