Abstract
Internationalisation processes affect academic cultures by establishing new challenges within different higher education functions, with academics being an important actor in its implementation. Even though internationalisation is usually central to higher education reforms in small higher education systems, to be successful, it needs to be accepted and acknowledged by the individual academics and supported by institutional and national mechanisms. In our chapter, we analyse the academics’ views on their institutional focus on research excellence and internationalisation and to what extent they are involved in international research activities. Internationalisation is one of the major reform issues in the three studied small peripheral higher education systems (Slovenia, Croatia and Lithuania). The chapter looks at the internationalisation of research, which is high on the institutional agendas, but its actual implications in the studied countries vary due to different historical backgrounds, focus and approaches. Presenting comparative analysis, the authors discuss differences and similarities in three former socialist higher education systems and analyse gender, ranks and disciplinary perspectives.
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Notes
- 1.
We then tested these new measures for reliability using Cronbach alpha test (see Table 22.8 in the Appendix) and confirmed that we could use them as reliable derived variables in further analyses.
- 2.
Statistics Canada (2021). Variant of CIP 2016 – STEM and BHASE groupings. Retrieved from https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p3VD.pl?Function=getVD&TVD=401856
- 3.
STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics, BHASE: business, humanities, health, arts, social science, and education (Statistics Canada 2021). We decided to use these groupings of disciplines due to the specifics of the coding of academic discipline categories in the APIKS questionnaire and data. In practice, the classification closely resembles Biglan’s hard sciences-soft sciences categorisation.
- 4.
Senior academic: full professor, associate professor, senior researcher; junior academic: assistant professor, lecturer, researcher, junior researcher.
- 5.
We tested for statistical significance of differences between countries using the Chi-Square test.
- 6.
5-point Likert scale.
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In Croatia this work has been fully supported by the University of Rijeka under the project number 18-203, Academic community from within: the challenges of changes in the academic profession.
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Appendix
Appendix
1.1 Factor Analysis (Table 22.7)
1.2 Cronbach Alpha Reliability Test (Tables 22.8 and 22.9)
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Flander, A., Kočar, S., Ćulum Ilić, B., Leišytė, L., Pekşen, S., Rončević, N. (2022). Impact of Internationalisation Strategies on Academics’ International Research Activities – Case Study of the Three HE Peripheries: Slovenia, Croatia and Lithuania. In: Klemenčič, M. (eds) From Actors to Reforms in European Higher Education. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09400-2_22
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