Global Mobility and Higher Learning ― Social, Organizational and Cognitive Forces

This book examines the transformations of higher learning, caused by convergences and divergences of social, organizational and cognitive forces, in the light of global mobility. As some of these forces generate status anxiety, and others – enhanced self-worth, this volume asks the questions: How can students navigate treacherous education markets to reduce the former and increase the latter? Which specific forces and confluences enhance the quality of self-discovery? Does the search for identity and meaning produce better results when conducted internationally? Which transformative drivers of global mobility enhance social mobility? What allows some students to gain the capacity for impactful higher learning at a time when others lose it? Why are strategically-minded students increasingly concerned about equality and the quality of contribution to the common good of education, rather than about their own status? What makes some places of learning stand out when students recount their journeys of self-discovery and roads to self-worth?

This book includes a broad range of stories and first hand perspectives that are often overlooked in the process of internationalization of higher education. The narratives offer important insights to consider, given the ever-increasing disquiets of mobility-focused and competitiveness-oriented global higher education.

Anatoly V. Oleksiyenko is Associate Professor at the Division of Policy, Administration and Social Science, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.