Geopolitics & Public Affairs
Strategy & Leadership
- Internationalization is increasingly shaped by geopolitics, visas, and student mobility, and may shift where higher education influence sits.
- China, and more broadly South-South cooperation, may be helping create alternative centers of higher education.
- In fundraising, organizational actorhood and CASE links matter more than marketization; the American model is not universal.
Universities are often presented as neutral institutions dedicated to teaching and research. But according to latest research, they are increasingly acting as organizations with their own goals, strategies, and global ambitions.
Drawing on two studies covering more than 500 universities across 89 countries, HEC Paris Assistant Professor Seungah Sarah Lee, explains how internationalization has become intertwined with geopolitics, student mobility, global rankings, and emerging forms of South-South cooperation.
In her first paper, she discusses why universities in different national contexts pursue internationalization in original ways, how institutions may be contributing to the emergence of alternative centers of higher education, and why questions of soft power are becoming harder to ignore.
In a second study, the Doha-based academic examines the global spread of university fundraising and development offices, showing that professional networks such as CASE appear to play a more important role than broad marketization in explaining their diffusion.
Together, the findings raise broader questions about how universities position themselves in a fragmented global environment and how they balance international ambitions with local priorities. Could they become one of soft power’s new faces?
