How to Create an Internationalization and Global Partnerships Strategy

As the world becomes more interconnected, universities are uncovering more and more opportunities to benefit from international partnerships. While historically these partnerships were often ad-hoc affairs driven by unit leaders, the growing complexity of international challenges and increasing global competition requires a more centralized and prioritized approach.

International partnerships have been around for decades, but their value has grown in recent years as competition for students, academic programming, and research funding has increased.

While in the past toothless MOUs and off-book faculty-to-faculty engagements were sufficient, the increase in geopolitical complexities requires institutions to invest in a centralized, coordinated internationalization and global partnership strategy that deploys both bottom-up and top-down tactics. Explore the takeaways below or jump to the next steps.

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Global partnerships are essential for achieving institutional goals

Increasing competition as emerging economy universities rise in the rankings alongside budget cuts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the need for institutions to leverage collaborations to achieve their enrolment, academic, and research goals. Institutions that are first to make relationships with particular institutions or regions tend to lock-in “preferred status” with key stakeholders.

International partners are undergoing significant transformation

Historical, international collaborations were likely to be one-off, transactional engagements between individual faculty. The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating efforts to combine and expand partnership engagements to tie together academic, student mobility, faculty exchange, and research initiatives in order to deepen collaboration and sustain the activities over time.

Institutions with robust international strategies ensure they possess clear ownership, a dynamic portfolio, and a recognized international brand

With so many individual collaborations between faculty and departments across institutions, it is essential that a person or office on campus be responsible for tracking and evaluating these partnerships. International strategy champions in their many forms facilitate connections across engagements and educate faculty and unit leaders about the changing dynamics of international requirements. They also play an important role in shaping institutional brand and reputation abroad.

Executives can help empower faculty to engage in better partnership opportunities by proactively educating hem and aligning the right incentives

Most participants surveyed during the roundtables indicated their faculty struggle most with understanding existing institutional connections with and expectations for international partners. Proactively providing intelligence reports and creating one-stop shops for all international legal and regulatory requirements have helped some institutions steer faculty towards more successful partnerships. Sustainable funding spiked as a challenge as well, with institutions suggesting ways to make their seed funding mechanisms more robust.

Does seed funding pay off? One institution saw its seed funding lead to a 10-fold return in external funding obtained.

Leaders can jumpstart the formation of their institutional partnerships by expanding upon existing relationships and collaborations within units and faculties

While most international engagements will remain located within individual departments or colleges, leaders should elevate a portion that align with cross-campus priorities and strategic goals to institutional partnerships. These partnerships often begin as small collaborations that expand as leaders from the two partners build trust, expand relationships, and realize shared opportunities.

Participants with such institutional partnerships shared that creating regular communication channels and having clear evaluative metrics were two of the most important factors to expanding their engagements to this extent.