Staying Ahead of the Game? Universities’ Use of European, National and Regional Interest Organizations to Influence Internationalization Policy

The paper explores to what extent and how universities in the Netherlands and Germany influence European, national and regional policy regarding the internationalization of higher education. The Bologna Process has been the central reform process of higher education systems in the European Union in the past decades and is closely related to fostering the internationalization of higher education. While a lot of research focuses on how internationalization policies change universities, very little research exists on how universities change internationalization policies. Therefore, this paper takes the university perspective and covers the levels of university leadership, the central administrative level, and the level of professors. The research design takes a historical-institutionalist approach to study the period from 2010 to 2020. A comparative analysis investigates two Dutch and two German universities as case studies. The countries were selected as signature states of the Bologna Declaration with a high level of internationalization and overall comparable higher education systems while differing in the intra-university organization. Compared to the Netherlands, in Germany, the intra-university organization provides more influence for the professoriate given, amongst others, its chair system and the constitutionally enshrined academic freedom. Following the design of the underlying PhD project, the theory of gradual institutional change informed the selection of one university with a very detailed internationalization strategy that includes a comparably strict enforcement regime and one university with a very general strategy and (almost) no reference to its enforcement in each country. The data comprises around 28 semi-structured interviews (work in progress, so far 21 interviews completed) and was collected as one of three focal areas in the context of the larger project. The research covers interest organizations at three levels. At the European level, the European University Association (EUA), European university alliances and subject-specific professional associations are covered. At the national level, the national Rectors’ conferences (UNL and HRK), the national research funding bodies (NWO and DFG) and the organizations promoting internationalization in higher education (Nuffic and DAAD) are included. At the regional level in both countries, the local city administrations and, in Germany, the federal state ministries are covered. Thematic analysis is used to analyze the interview transcripts. One expected contribution is insights into the extent of universities’ lobbying efforts, which differ between types of universities more than between countries. The second expected contribution regards the ways of influencing European, national and regional policy, which show similarities and differences between the Netherlands and Germany. A focus lies on the interaction of university actors with interest organizations and whether they act as individual change agents or on behalf of the university as a whole. The research finds that professors sometimes pursue subject-specific interests sidelining their university. The latter is particularly relevant in light of the growing competition and pressure on universities to become organizations with a coherent position.