Will Academics Drive or Obstruct the Slovenian Government’s Internationalisation Agenda for Higher Education?

Abstract

The present article is concerned with the question of how conducive the academic culture and climate in Slovenian higher education institutions are to internationalisation. Our underlying assumption is that academic staff represent either an important driving force or an obstacle to the implementation of internationalisation policies formulated at the national level and diffused into institutional practices. Specifically, we investigate whether the present academic attitudes and behaviours are in line with the internationalisation aims and objectives stated in the National Higher Education Programme 2011–2020. Our findings point to generally favourable attitudes of academics towards internationalisation. We also find that academics’ own priorities regarding internationalisation tend to be higher than the perceived priorities of their respective institutions. At the same time, however, the preferences of academics regarding the various activities associated with the “internationalisation of study at home”, especially conducting courses in foreign languages, are lower and highly divergent, and might therefore obstruct the government’s agenda in this regard.

Keywords

• the academic profession
• academic culture
• higher education reforms
• slovenia
• internationalisation
• international cooperation