The Secretary General thanks the participants and hosts for a productive meeting. She reflects that internationalization is a complex process that is perceived differently in different contexts and by different stakeholders. There is a need to re-conceptualize internationalization to place more emphasis on its goals of improving higher education and lives through expanding opportunities while narrowing gaps. The IAU and participant organizations will continue the dialogue on developing a framework to guide internationalization in a beneficial way.

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IAU 4th Global Meeting of Associations of Universities
(GMA IV)
Internationalization of Higher Education:
New Players, New Approaches
New Delhi (India) ‐ April 11‐12, 2011
Concluding Remarks
Eva Egron‐Polak, IAU Secretary General
Your Excellency Minister Shri Kapil Sibal, colleagues on the dais, dear participants;
It has been an honor and a privilege to have been able to hold this 4th Global Meeting of
Associations in India, an exciting place for higher education. As all of our meetings and
conferences, it too has been a lesson in inter‐cultural dialogue among many of us as the
group at AIU and IAU prepared for this event. Personally, I feel richer for the experience,
having, I hope, many more friends in India than before we began this process.
My colleagues from IAU and I are very grateful for this collaboration.
I also hope that our Indian partners found this event enriching and useful and that we will
maintain many productive interactions.
The goal of the IAU in holding these Global Meetings of Associations is to learn and to offer
a forum or a platform for others to share this opportunity to learn, to compare and share
their knowledge and to network. I believe we have achieved this goal. Certainly, we have
been offered a very interesting, but unfortunately only a partial glimpse on the Indian
higher education system and the key developments taking place in this vast and diverse
nation, underlining the challenges being faced by the education system when faced with a
huge youth population which clamors for education including for more access to higher
education. We heard about the building of new institutions to meet this demand, of
existing institutions expanding their offer, the impressive use being made of ICTs to ensure
that learning opportunities are offered to all and we learned how international cooperation
can contribute in these areas.
What I take away for this brief glimpse, is that the Indian landscape of higher education is
nearly as vast and as complex as the entire global landscape of higher education with one
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2. major difference: there is a tremendous will and commitment on the part of the Indian
government to meet these challenges and to do so in a highly strategic manner. There is
also a tremendous dynamism at the level of the institutional leadership that bodes well for
success.
I look forward to hearing the Honorable Minister add to this picture that has been drawn for
us during the past two days of discussions.
On the theme of this 4th Global Meeting, namely the internationalization of higher
education, much has been said and much more time could have been devoted to a dialogue
about this process, especially as it is becoming almost unavoidable.
We know that and the various presentations we heard confirmed this, internationalization
is understood and perceived differently in different parts of the world. This is also true even
in different institutions and by different stakeholders within the same institution.
During this meeting, I heard internationalization referred to as a Survival Tool, a Tool for
Strategy, a means to achieve quality, along with the more traditional ways of describing this
process as, for example, education of global citizens. However, we also heard that in
reality, internationalization is often an industry and that it can actually be quite harmful.
The risks and the negative impacts of this process must be noted, recognized and combated
and some of the assumptions that underpin the internationalization process, as it is now
evolving need to be seriously questioned rather than taking the benefits of this process for
granted.
At this Meeting, and at an increasing number of other similar events, as well as in a growing
number of articles, questions are being raised about the ‘traditional’ view of this process
and many, along with IAU, are calling for a fundamental re‐thinking or re‐conceptualization
of internationalization. As internationalization (however we may define it) becomes ever
more important, for institutions and for governments, this re‐conceptualization or re‐
examination of the fundamentals of the process becomes imperative.
I also believe that this Meeting made it crystal clear that no organization, no nation, no
institution can do so on their own. Indeed, the breadth of actors that will be involved in this
re‐thinking and the number of voices that will actively contribute to creating a new
understanding of internationalization, will be a determining factor in how sound our new
thinking about this process will be and how widely a new conceptualization of
internationalization will be taken up in the academic community.
In this regard, it was very much appreciated by the IAU Board and my colleagues to hear
participants underline and note that this Meeting, which brings together national, regional
and international associations of universities also served as a bridge to hold a dialogue with
the more specialized associations, such as the EAIE, the AIEA or CBIE, which focus their work
more specifically on internationalization.
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3. This dialogue needs to continue as we take up the challenge of re‐defining
internationalization – not for the sake of a more elegant definition, but as a central building
block for guiding actions at institutional levels.
The consensus about what we must stress as we move forward was quite stark. Clearly, we
need to place more emphasis on why higher education institutions internationalize. It is not
a goal in itself; this process must lead to improvements in all aspects of higher education,
including quite possibly to its expansion. But I would argue that this too is merely a means,
not an end in itself.
Better higher education has a bigger purpose – improving lives – locally and globally.
So, internationalization must contribute to narrowing gaps, increasing respect and
appreciation among people, to expanding opportunities and to pushing the frontiers of
knowledge but in ways that are not detrimental locally or globally, now or in the future. It is
for this reason as well that including a session focusing on Haiti’s higher education system
needs was highly relevant. Internationalization also means that, as one of our participants
from Africa pointed out, when our finger hurts, our whole body suffers. When some higher
education systems are in trouble, the global academic community should react.
For such sentiments to become fully incorporated in our work, the definition of
internationalization that we adopt must integrate clear and articulated statements about
these goals and purposes. It must, in fact, be clear about the values we promote as we
engage in internationalization. Perhaps, we need to be less neutral and dare to be more
prescriptive in this regard, or at least be ready to set some guidelines.
You have been a highly challenging group – diverse, critical, vocal and constructive. I know I
speak on behalf of the President of IAU and hopefully also on behalf of the AIU, when I
express how much we appreciate all of your inputs ‐ the speakers, the moderators, and
those of you who challenged us from the floor.
I hope that we can count on your constructive participation as we take the next steps. The
first one is to urge all of you to become far more familiar with what already exists in the
area of declarations, guidelines and codes about internationalization so that we build on
past achievements rather than re‐inventing the wheel.
The IAU Statements are in your Primer and on our Website. We will ensure that they
become better known. At the same time, we will also invite feedback and volunteers for
the development of a new conceptualization or a new framework in which to cast
internationalization that is beneficial to all who take part in the process.
Thank you for a highly stimulating Meeting.
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