Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Implementing “Internationalization at Home” for China’s International Education Sustainability: Challenges and Strategies

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine stakeholders’ perspectives on implementing “internationalization at home” for international education sustainability in China in the post-epidemic era. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 (12 male and 14 female) participants to explore their opinions on the challenges of and strategies for the implementation of “internationalization at home” in higher education institutions. It was found that an institutional international curriculum mechanism construction is needed. The cross-cultural teaching capacity of faculty members needs to be promoted. Funding resources and organizational guarantees need to be provided. International campus environments and cultures need to be built. The discussion and conclusions are provided in the last section.

1. Introduction

The idea of “internationalization at home” plays an important role in promoting the sustainable development of higher education institutions; it is considered a hot topic regarding the development of sustainable internationalization in higher education institutions—particularly during the post-epidemic era [1]. It was put forward by Bentt Nilsson during the spring Forum of the European Institute of International Education (EAIE) in 1999; he defined the idea of internationalization at home as all activities related to international affairs in the field of education, except for the overseas mobility of students [2]. Moreover, the goal of internationalization at home is clearly defined as "to give all students the opportunity to accept the influence of international concepts and cross-border cultures during their study period, so as to improve their abilities and qualifications and cope with the needs of the changing global world". The idea of internationalization at home has been developed under the joint action of the developmental trends of higher education internationalization during the period of COVID-19. Under tension in international relations and anti-globalization trends, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought new uncertainties to the internationalization of education in recent years—with not only a new background and characteristics reflecting the current times, but also bringing new challenges and opportunities to the internationalization of higher education worldwide. Current difficulties in the internationalization of higher education include the fact that traditional internationalization is facing realistic difficulties and obstacles in the internationalization of education brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic [3].

Many studies have pointed out that the traditional model of internationalization in education has inherent problems [4]. The traditional internationalization model—characterized by a unidirectional cross-border flow of personnel–is currently faced with problems in educational justice and educational quality, etc., making is easy to exacerbate the unreasonable distribution of educational resources, eliminate the ethnic characteristics of local education, consolidate cultural hegemony, and ignore educational achievements and quality [5]. The COVID-19 pandemic has directly affected the traditional international movement of educator. The international outbreak of COVID-19 has directly cut off personnel flows, led to insufficient numbers of international faculty members, and direct problems such as studying abroad not being free, as well as extending to problems with international scientific research cooperation, the international education industry, and other related aspects—making education internationalization for the seeking of new ideas and advancements in the internationalization process appears to be pressing matters.

However, there is a dearth of studies examining the challenges of and strategies for the policy agenda of “internationalization at home” in China’s world-class universities in the post-epidemic era. There are research gaps in the analysis of how to implement “internationalization at home” for China’s international education sustainability. For example, most current studies concentrate on identifying the idea or the concept of “internationalization at home” in different contextual backgrounds [6]. However, few studies focus on how to implement “internationalization at home” at both the national and local levels. Thus, this study aims to examine both the challenges of and strategies for the policy agenda of “internationalization at home” in China’s sustainable universities in the post-epidemic era [7]. The research question goal is to examine the current difficulties of implementing “internationalization at home” for China’s international education sustainability. The study is divided into several parts: The first part explores the pandemic’s influence on the internationalization of higher education. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a variety of specific problems to international education, and at the same time, has objectively promoted the reform of education patterns and brought certain opportunities [7]. In this study, we assumed that the pandemic had a great influence on the current development of international education at both the national and local levels.

The second part explores the idea of “internationalization at home” in higher education system and the third part focuses on the significance of “internationalization at home” in the higher education system. The fourth and fifth parts concentrate on providing the methods and results of this study. In the last section, the discussion and conclusion are offered.

2. The Pandemic’s Influence on the Internationalization of Higher Education

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the global crisis of internationalizing education. The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced the demand for the internationalization of higher education by blocking the flow of people [8]. To prevent infection, many countries have taken measures such as closing borders and restricting the entry of international students, which not only reduces the willingness of individual students to participate in international education and blocks the path to do so, but also hinders the flow of international talents and causes an uneven distribution of international teachers—ultimately leading to difficulties in sharing individual talents and the slow output of scientific research results [9].

The epidemic has had an impact on colleges and universities—especially private colleges and universities—resulting in a decrease in students, a decreased absorption capacity, financial strain, impaired teaching output, and layoffs [10]. The epidemic has impacted the traditional overseas-study model, while with the emerging online education model, it is difficult to achieve the sustained and stable growth of education. The online education model has the characteristics of auxiliary teaching; it is a type of emergency study method that does not give students a complete overseas-study experience or high-quality campus offline-classroom teaching results, cannot fundamentally change education methods or the sustainable development of the internationalization of education, still needs to rely on internationalization, etc. [11]. The domestic demand for international higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic exceeded the output limit of local internationalization, resulting in difficulties in teaching evaluations and teaching quality assurance. Due to the barrier of the epidemic, teaching in colleges and universities mostly took place online; however, the current online education platform has problems such as an imperfect infrastructure, a less-than-smooth teaching process, high design costs, and simplistic platform functions. In addition, the model of universities with Chinese characteristics still needs to be adjusted—personnel training standards are slowly being updated, the content is vague, and the internationalization ability is still insufficient [12].

The pandemic has also brought new opportunities for the internationalization of education and the development of universities. The COVID-19 epidemic has objectively promoted the development of internationalization at home. Some research has indicated that the epidemic has accelerated the internationalization of higher education and that the education gap has gradually narrowed. With the rise of unilateral protectionism and anti-globalization under the COVID-19 pandemic, the flow direction of educational resources has become more diversified. Asian countries have gained more educational opportunities and resources and their position in the world education pattern has gradually risen, promoting a new world education pattern consisting of a more equitable resource distribution and a more reasonable education distribution [13]. Therefore, based on the analysis above, research hypotheses have also been defined stating that the pandemic has had a great influence on the internationalization of higher education institutions.

3. The Idea of “Internationalization at Home” in Higher Education Systems

Under the epidemic situation, the developmental logic of internationalization has shifted from epistemology to political theory, which has increased the influence of international political situations on education patterns [14]. The trend of international higher education has also changed from traditional elitism to the “internationalization at home” model within universities; this includes the dual-value concept of nationality and cosmopolitanism, the recognition of a community with a shared future, the government-guided and market-led independent innovation development model, and the balanced relationship between the idea of “internationalization at home” and transnational internationalization. The obstruction of the flow of human resources brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic has promoted the internationalization process in local areas to a certain extent [15]. Some previous studies have also clarified the leading role of universities in educational internationalization in the post-epidemic period—emphasizing the importance of mutual cultural respect, mutual understanding, and cross-cultural teaching and research—and has pointed out that local internationalization is an important cross-cultural experience for students and an important model of educational internationalization reform [16].

In terms of education policies, the international education policies of different countries are consistent in the context of the internationalization of education and the COVID-19 pandemic [17]. The superiority of the higher education system enables universities to quickly respond to the difficulties of the epidemic and change their teaching and research models. The transformation of the development logic of higher education internationalization provides new value for internationalization at home. The development of Internet technology and modern communication technology also promotes the development of internationalization at home. Online education is one of the most important forms of internationalization at home. The development of information and communication technology transcends the limitations of time and space and provides possibilities for new teaching and research cooperation methods such as online teaching and online conferences, which is conducive to the efficient transmission of information and the enrichment and dissemination of knowledge [18].

4. The Significance of “Internationalization at Home” in Higher Education Systems

The idea of internationalization at home can promote the comprehensive benefits of Chinese universities [19]. Internationalization at home can balance the relationship between various educational subjects at home and abroad, better integrate educational resources, and improve the utilization rate of resources to build a diversified teaching environment and campus cultural atmosphere—which is conducive to the promotion of the conformal development of colleges and universities and gives full play to the characteristics and advantages of different colleges and universities [20]. In terms of specific teaching and research components, internationalization at home can meet more diverse educational needs in more students, improve students' welfare and happiness, enhance students' participation in scientific research and their confidence, expand talent reserves, and further enhance the scale and level of international cooperation of disciplines and the international influence of universities. Internationalization at home is an effective way to resist the negative impacts of COVID-19; it focuses on the cultivation of international abilities based on local institutions without regional restrictions and with flexible online communication forms, which can effectively avoid the obstruction of students' international mobility caused by the COVID-19 epidemic and improve the frequency and scope of international exchanges. The internationalization at home strategy is a major policy for universities to carry out local internationalization practices, including the core local internationalization strategy, strategic objectives, strategic measures, and strategic guarantees. The core of the internationalization at home strategy is the localization of international talent training and the universal benefits of groups [21,22].

The goal of the internationalization at home strategy is to enhance students' internationalization abilities and to build culturally sensitive attitudes in order to cultivate talent with the ability to learn independently, innovative spirit, and international vision. The core practice of internationalization at home is curriculum internationalization and extracurricular, international, cross-cultural activities, where curriculum internationalization refers to "learning plans that integrate international, cross-cultural and global dimensions into curriculum content, learning outcomes, assessment tasks, teaching methods and support services" [23,24]. This includes three aspects: international curriculum content, innovative bilingual teaching, and transnational curriculum research and development cooperation in universities. Extracurricular cross-cultural activities include international classrooms, campus cultural festivals, after-school visits, and other campus activities aimed at achieving convergence management, exploring multiple perspectives, and promoting cultural exchanges. The core guarantee of the local internationalization strategy is the use of Internet information technology as the medium. Modern network information technology is an important means of integrating both local and international educational resources. Therefore, the development of information technology has laid a technical foundation for the implementation of international education [25].

5. Methods

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 (12 male and 14 female) participants to explore their opinions on the challenges of and strategies for the policy agenda of “internationalization at home” in China’s sustainable universities in the post-epidemic era. The age of participants ranged from 22 to 28. All the participants came from four comprehensive research universities in Beijing. All 26 participants had engaged in at least one international learning program at their higher education institutions. The selected participants had gained relatively sufficient international learning experience during their learning programs. The interview questions for participants included: Could you tell us about your ideas on “internationalization at home”? Based on your experience, what challenges face the implementation of the policy of “internationalization at home” in China’s universities? Can you offer some suggestions or strategies? All of these questions were created to be consistent with the major research questions of this study. We selected the questions based on a previous literature review and preliminary research. Before creating the proposed questions, we invited five international students and two experts in the field of international higher education development to provide a focus group, talking for 1 h and 40 min. The major task of this preliminary focus group was to validate the proposed questions and also to follow the previous scientific literature. Through three rounds of discussions among the invited international students and scholars—as the key stakeholders of the study—on the internationalization of the higher education system, the proposed questions were finalized as above.

An online Tencent meeting was used in this study and we recruited six graduate students to arrange the interview process. Each interview took about 20–25 mins. After completing the interviews with the participants, the 26 transcripts were exported and then the coding process was conducted by two researchers in the study. Based on the previous literature and research questions, the major two sub-themes explored included the two key words of challenges and strategies. After the coding of the transcript, we analyzed the relevant contents based on the sub-themes.

For the coding process, we followed Kent Löfgren’s coding process as follows: in the first stage, we carefully read the transcripts and reviewed all the transcripts of the selected participants. We also made notes and carefully reviewed the content line by line. In the second stage, we aimed to label relevant pieces, including relevant words, phrases, sentences, and sections. Labels denoted relevant activities, ideas, concepts, and opinions. In the third stage, we tried to decide if something was relevant for coding based on the main content. During this process, we kept open-minded and aimed for a description of things. In the fourth stage, we created categories by bringing several codes together. All the codes created were carefully reviewed and analyzed. We labeled the key categories, including major categories and sub-categories. Then, we described the connections between the selected categories. In other words, the selected categories and connections were the main findings of our research. In the fifth stage, we needed to decide if there was a hierarchy among the selected categories. Based on our analysis, we wrote the results and described the categories and how they were connected. In the sixth stage, we offered remarks on the transcripts and made notes from participatory observations, including education policy documents, online information, and any other type of qualitative data.

6. Results

Many participants highlighted that there are many challenges faced by implementing internationalization at home in world-class universities in the post-epidemic era.

6.1. Institutional International Curriculum Mechanism Construction Is Needed

Some participants argued that the construction of administrative departments related to the implementation of internationalization at home in colleges and universities is not perfect.

I think relevant national policies and institutional systems need to be further improved. Universities need a more inclusive and open macrosocial environment and clearer and reliable policy documents to guide and implement the construction of local international administrative departments in universities.

The concept and implementation pathways of “internationalization at home” in some colleges and universities are vague, and the establishment of relevant administrative departments has directly copied the phenomenon of western colleges and universities—ignoring local construction characteristics and teaching management needs according to local conditions—and there are problems such as the insufficient personnel, low awareness of internationalization, and weak pertinence.

From my observations, there are disadvantages in the teaching and research systems of colleges and universities. The curriculum concepts and settings of some colleges and universities are completely westernized, ignoring the essence of traditional culture—some teachers fail to implement socialist core values in the teaching process and curriculum integration is not innovative enough.

Some participants also argued that the operational feasibility of international curriculum projects is limited by cultural differences and technologies and lacks strong organizational planning and rich teaching content, which leads to the reduction of students' willingness to participate in international activities, cross-cultural learning experiences, and educational outcomes.

I found that the construction of teaching quality systems and evaluation systems in colleges and universities is not perfect. Thus, it is difficult to truly guarantee the quantity and quality of innovative talents and international talents.

6.2. The Cross-Cultural Teaching Capacity of Faculty Members Needs to Be Promoted

Some participants argued that due to the impact of the epidemic, it was difficult to introduce international teachers. The composition of existing international teaching staff is insufficient, and there is a lack of high-level international teachers. The quality of teaching staff needs to be improved.

Teachers' cross-cultural knowledge, bilingual teaching abilities, internationalization awareness, and modern communication technology skills need to be improved.

In addition, the pandemic has sharply reduced the international movement of students and teachers. Several participants explained that, in the specific process of local international academic teaching and research, communication forms such as scientific research conferences, cooperative experiments, scientific seminars, and visiting scholars were all negatively affected by the epidemic, the depth and atmosphere of scientific research were greatly reduced due to the obstacles of space–time flow, and the academic output also decreased.

I insist that we need more international teachers with cross-cultural competence. However, there is no scientific, reasonable, and systematic way to carry out the internationalization of universities. Under the current epidemic situation, local internationalization is mostly carried out in a simple online course setting, lacking a systematic course design, systematic teaching model, or diversified scientific research and life planning. In specific practice, there are also problems such as the loss of international teachers, low teaching efficiency, and singular methods of development.

6.3. Funding Resources and Organizational Guarantee Need to Be Provided

As the core content of internationalization at home, online courses are unstable and have inherent drawbacks.

I think online courses affect teaching experience and results, making it difficult for students to fully engage in the classroom, understand knowledge, and perceive cross-cultural cohesion, which makes students require cross-cultural learning, online cooperation experience guidance, and after-school guidance. In addition, both teachers and students need more technical training support to improve the efficiency of international teaching.

Due to the impact of the epidemic, there have been many difficulties in the internationalization process. Some participants figured out that, at present, the macro political background of internationalization is unstable. Educational conflicts and cultural hegemony are common between countries, and government policies are needed to maintain stability and support. The international higher education system is unstable, there is the unfair phenomenon that disadvantaged countries lose the right to speak in education, and there are also problems in individual countries such as missing support system construction and the slow recovery of education systems.

The epidemic has hindered the development of world trade and the economy, reduced the economic returns of international education, and damaged the individual interests of colleges and universities through excessive commercialization and industrial monopolies, leading to a lack of financial support for the internationalization process of colleges and universities in the local area.

6.4. International Campus Environments and Cultures Need to Be Built

Several participants highlighted that the subject-based exploration of internationalization at home is narrow, and educational participants in different research fields and disciplines have different attitudes toward internationalization at home, which makes it difficult to implement relevant events in universities and colleges in a unified way.

I think the internationalization at home concept, the organic integration of local internationalization theory awareness and concrete practice, and the correct balance between local internationalization and traditional internationalization model are not well understood.

Current campus spiritual and cultural construction is insufficient. The development of campus spirit and culture remains only on the surface, following instrumental needs such as international projects and management forms, and lacks an international dimension that can be implemented into teaching and research practices and the university system or the integration of cultural elements such as teaching cultures, organizational cultures, scientific research spirit, and school vision with the international educational spirit. Some participants argued that universities need to create an inclusive and harmonious campus culture atmosphere through classroom teaching, scientific research cooperation, foreign affairs management, and other various aspects of daily life via funds, international summer schools, and international campus cultural activities for the promotion of campus culture, the international talents of native cultures, and universities’ international strengths to attract more international education resources.

From my perspective, in the context of multiculturalism, colleges and universities not only need to face the shackles and stereotypes of the traditional Chinese educational culture—which is deeply rooted and difficult to innovate—but also need to face the problem that Chinese culture is being dissipated and weakened under the impact of foreign culture. A clever balance between Chinese and Western educational spirits and attitudes is an important component to integrate into the campus culture of colleges and universities.

I think education intermediary organizations play a role in the bridging of third-party agencies, service functions, configurations, and evaluation functions; prevent individual colleges and universities from conflicting with official government contacts; promote market-oriented competitive research funding mechanisms; attract foreign university and research institution participation; improve overseas study information platform building; and encourage qualified educational intermediary organizations to participate in national projects, so as to provide more legal guarantees and policy support for internationalization at home.

Technical support is the basis of local international teaching practice. The government and education departments should implement the construction of online network platforms; pay attention to signal problems, time difference problems, and language problems in local international teaching practices; do a good job in relevant infrastructure construction and skill training; and popularize technical support and skill training for the use of relevant hardware equipment.

Some participants suggested that colleges and universities should combine advanced foreign experience and the needs of local education, optimize the domestic international education evaluation system—taking different education subjects, social demands, student experiences, technical conditions, and ideological and moral factors into account in the system—and make the internationalization of education achievement evaluation indices clearer to perfect the system. It is necessary to optimize the quality assurance system for the local internationalization of colleges and universities by introducing strict standards for international teachers and students, optimizing the composition of international teachers and students and resources, strengthening the assistance and guidance for local international teaching and research processes, and implementing strict and diversified quality assessments to ensure the maximum achievement and quality optimization of the curriculum system. In addition, this is an important method for promoting the construction of the recognized international brands to connect the scientific research system to industrial output (See

Table 1. Challenges faced in the implementation of internationalization at home.

Challenges faced in the implementation of internationalization at home	Institutional international curriculum mechanism construction is needed.
	The cross-cultural teaching capacity of faculty members needs to be promoted.
	Funding resources and organizational guarantees need to be provided.
	International campus environments and cultures need to be built.

).

7. Discussion and Conclusions

Along with the results above, we found that the construction of an international curriculum system is the core component of the internationalization at home strategy. The construction of an international curriculum system is a systematic project with arduous steps; it is necessary to do a good job in the top-level design of the system, to integrate relevant courses and departments for internationalization, to allocate foreign language courses, and to take on the improvement of teachers' cross-cultural competence. Higher education institutions should strengthen students' international knowledge, international vocational skills, and cross-cultural communication skills [26]. It is necessary to build an international curriculum cloud model, improve real-time-broadcast and recorded courses, harness the power of local communities and policy dividends to promote curriculum construction, secure online courses with cyber intelligence and information technologies, and integrate local characteristics and research and learning practices into the teaching process. We actively hold international activities that are locally based such as international curriculum weeks, online communication meetings, campus culture festivals, cutting-edge lectures, and special studies to create a good atmosphere of local internationalization and to optimize students' international learning experiences [27].

Higher education institutions should improve the local international administrative management system of world-class universities [28]. With the international exchange department as the main driving force, a whole department in a university can be formed to promote participation in the local internationalization process, and an internal administrative mechanism of information exchange between universities, policy implementation, scientific resource coordination, and harmonious departmental relations can be constructed. Colleges and universities should rely on the international platform and scientific research cooperation to promote local teachers' participation in international training, overseas studies, international conferences, and publications in international academic journals. Through unified training, exchanges of experience, mutual guidance, and different schools’ methods for supervision, teachers' professional knowledge reserves, academic beliefs, and cultural tolerance and understanding can be promoted. While leading to theoretical improvements, this also helps teachers to be skilled and innovative in diversified teaching methods and, finally, realizes the common development of teachers' teaching abilities, scientific research abilities, cross-cultural communication abilities, and ideological and moral knowledge. The international exchange of students is an important part of internationalization at home. During the epidemic, colleges and universities should not only maintain normal communication channels based on ensuring safety, but should also strengthen new ideas for the international exchange of local students and form new patterns of international exchanges using both traditional channels and innovative channels [29,30]. Local international student exchange depends on the improvement of local international curriculum systems, teaching and research systems, and administrative management systems [31].

Financial support is an important driver of internationalization at home for world-class universities. Both colleges and universities should make good use of the financial aid provided by the government to support colleges and universities in a reasonable and specialized way and should design scientific and reasonable application criteria and assessment standards to guide them in order to assign material rewards to local international teachers and students. Universities should also strengthen cooperation with international universities, scientific research institutions, and related enterprises; open new channels of funding support; absorb international funds to promote local internationalization; and absorb corporate funds to realize economic feedback for education [32].

College campus environments and campus culture play an important role in guiding the development of local internationalization. Colleges and universities should establish an orientation for local international education that is universal and beneficial. The direction of local internationalization has abandoned the tendency of placing excessive weight on mobility indicators and instead sets the focus of internationalization as domestic students who lack cross-border learning opportunities, so as to achieve inclusive international education by integrating local educational resources. Creating a suitable local international campus cultural environment is pivotal for colleges and universities to strengthen the soft export of culture and the localization process of international teachers and students. Many previous studies have also suggested that universities should attract international resources by exporting their culture and should cooperate with governments’ opening policies and the current situation in industry, strengthen the development of cultural connotations, carry out strategic cooperation and cultural exchanges with universities of countries along the "One Belt and One Road", improve students' cultural practice abilities, ethical understanding, and develop an appearance and attitude of respecting diverse cultures and individual differences [33,34,35,36,37,38].

There are some limitations to this study: The limited sample size is considered one disadvantage of this research. For future studies, more participants could be invited to receive more contextual information. The limited area (China) is regarded as the second limitation of this study. Additional regions could be explored to obtain real-life representations of students’ development at different kinds of regional institutions. The limited time interval is regarded as the third limitation of this study. Diverse and long-term time intervals could be analyzed to investigate changing trends in the perceptions of students. In addition, this study is based on an interview (a single data source), and the interpretation of the interview data might be subjective. In the future, data triangulation should be considered to validate the authors' interpretation of the interview.

In conclusion, during the post-epidemic period, universities and colleges should strengthen international education cooperation and cultural exchanges with other universities, scientific research institutions, and international organizations; replace unilateral protection with the concept of cooperation; and replace scientific and technological blockades with academic exchanges, so as to make up for the damage caused by physical international immobility during the epidemic in terms of local internationalization [39,40,41,42,43,44]. This will lead to the international cooperation of higher education institutions towards the concept of "recognizing education and knowledge as global common interests" advocated by UNESCO and the concept of "community with a shared future for mankind", which assume a shared governmental responsibility for global education and maintains the ideal of multilateral and diverse cultural cooperation [45,46,47,48,49].