Keywords

Since the surprising vote by the British public to leave the European Union in mid-2016 and then similarly dramatic results of the national election in the United States later that year, numerous news articles and editorials, as well as small number of academic works, have explored the adverse effects of rising nativism in politics on international education. Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, a magazine for academics, for instance, Gluckman (2018) pointed out a number of challenges brought about by the uncertain and often hostile political climate, including slowing enrollment numbers, anxiety among students, worries about the prestige of American universities among academic leaders, and lack of a national policy framework about international education (also see Fischer, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2018). As in many other news stories and editorials, Gluckman’s ultimate concern is that the United States is losing out the competition for international students as a nation on the global stage. Writing for a more public audience of the Forbes magazine, and more explicitly reflecting the same dominant politico-economic narrative that even academics embrace without hesitation, Anderson (2018a, 2018b) adds a more bluntly nationalistic view of international education. After presenting the dollar value of companies started by partners who were once international students, Gluckman shows the potential dangers to the new wave of immigrants, those who first come here as international students, due to the hostile policies of Trump administration. Furthermore, both articles assume English-speaking countries as the de facto leaders and key competitors in international higher education, with the harvest they can make from the world a matter of their national benefit, rather than a global social institution which also has transformative potentials for the world at large.

We find it rather ironic that even when journalists and scholars write with a concern for international students and scholars, they still don’t see international education as a means for advancing knowledge and collectively contributing to global social good. International education remains an economic phenomenon, a market, and it is still defined in political, especially nationalistic terms. The politically hostile environment and policy obstructions are not viewed as disrupting the movement of passionate scientists and artists, young students and seasoned scholars, and inventors and explorers with limitless potentials. The shared global benefits, challenges, potentials, and visions of international education––its broader, global economic and social missions included—do not seem to appeal to many journalists and scholars who are concerned about the political disruptions. In other words, the persistent, even increasing, focus on economics and national interest lays bare significant gaps within the dominant view about international education. It exposes the lack of recognition that international education can and should also be pursued by nations and individuals, institutions and professional communities alike as a global asset, as an expanding network of humanity that is invested in advancing knowledge for global human good.

The argument that this book seeks to make is that given the major changes and disruptions, especially disruptions made by major nationalist and nativist political waves around the world, scholars of international education, as well as institutions of higher education, cannot afford to approach international education as business as usual. The increasing lack of diversity of perspectives about international education calls for philosophical as well as political perspectives, humanitarian as well as economic goals, ethical as well as pragmatic focuses, global good as well as national interest. A broader framework for research, policy, and practice would need to make room for all of the above and more. As Altbach and de Wit (2017) have noted in reference to policies of anti-global politicians such as Donald Trump in the US and Theresa May in Britain, that “[o]ccurrences of hostility and discriminatory practices… difficulties in obtaining visas, and numerous other problems, real or perceived, will affect how people think about mobility and internationalization. The genie is out of the bottle, and cannot easily be put back” (p. 4). As such, especially focusing on the political environment and shifting socioeconomic dynamics globally, we posit that scholars of international education must rethink the sufficiency of conventional frameworks behind current scholarship and practice, generate new perspectives to advance new discourses, develop and pursue new research agenda to address emerging challenges, foster collaboration and conversations across borders, and promote advocacy for global social mobility through education.

The rest of this chapter highlights a few different geopolitical points of reference that we believe could prompt the scholarly community in particular to “rethink” conventional narratives about international education. How should scholars of international education rethink/resituate their issues in the context of macro-level political and socio-economic changes at major destinations such as the United States (post-Trump era), UK (Brexit), Canada (Post-Trudeau), Australia (crash of international education “industry”) and other emerging markets? How can we situate our work and issues in the context of local changes and global impacts on major origins of international students such as China (e.g., economic rise along with One Belt One Road Initiative), India (e.g., national policy change), South Korea (e.g., Brain Korea 21, a project for naturing highly qualified human resource for the twenty-first century knowledge-based society) and other major sources? What critical perspectives should we address in relation to current, emerging, or anticipated issues/dynamics affecting international higher education? How can scholars engage different stakeholders—from fellow scholars to policy makers to practitioners to the professions and the general public—for advancing and enhancing not just nationalistic but also a global vision of international education? How can our scholarship prompt productive interventions by informing and influencing scholars/researchers, institutional leaders, and policy makers, or other stakeholders? Contributing authors of this book have explored such questions through content and organization, theory and method, and/or rhetorical and stylistic strategies. Together, the chapters not only cover a number of important, especially emerging, issues in the field of international education but also answer a variety of shared questions that could prompt scholarship on the broader and more specific issues in the future.

The chapters in this book collectively seek to identify the faultlines and potentially disrupt established and saturated narratives, insufficient questions, and outdated perspectives that have dominated discourses and research agenda about international students’ education. While the changes are ongoing and they make perspective-building challenging, we also posit that there have been significant enough developments for scholars in this field to create a new vantage point and start finding a handle on the issues. We are at a watershed moment where further waiting to let things coalesce seems no longer necessary. Accordingly, we asked our contributing authors to illustrate the need to rethink key issues, identify new problems, and generate new perspectives. The exigency of the approach taken and questions pursued by this book project lies in the premise that dramatic changes of recent times—political upheavals and geopolitical shifts, economic changes and crises, technological advancements and impacts on education—demand that scholars of international education revisit established issues and perspectives, as well as asking new questions and pursuing new projects. The discourse and scholarship on international education must transcend the complicity of its mainstream discourse with the nationalistic-only regime and the economic logic uncritically embraced by academic institutions and leaders, academic scholars and educators alike. Usually, academic scholarship doesn’t respond to ongoing changes because the changing situations affect scholarly research and conversation like a “moving target” affects the hunter. However, the current trajectory of changes and disruptions seem to have set in motion some major shifts that have already made impacts that can and should be talked about substantively and meaningfully.

The exigency of this book also lies in the need to address the uncertainty and anxiety bred by ongoing changes, whether they are among professors, administrators, and policy makers who want to understand how to conceptualize and handle uncertainties or among the students who are affected by the volatility of current situation. At a time when the world is supposed to look forward to reaping the benefits of globalization, current international tensions have seemed to paint a more callous world scenario. Marginson (2017) posits that strong rise of national identity had endangered the knowledge-making sector, which “can become sidelined, despite its great recent growth and its deep long-term potential for human formation and social transformation.” Thus, we have prompted our contributors to ask questions in response to emerging global/local conditions in order to study and report on how institutions can design curriculum and instructor their pedagogies, how different academic professionals can facilitate international student engagement, and how policy-level issues may need to be revisited. Similarly, instead of simply describing the current set up and issues of international higher education in popular destinations and in commonplace thematic frameworks, our contributors are requested to explore macro and meso level issues of political economy and global–local interactions affecting international student mobility, institutional policy, emerging economic models, social movements, academic support, and so on. The intersections of the local/national and global are becoming increasingly important not only because the issues (such as those raised by #MeToo Movement and #BlackLivesMatter) quickly transcend and spread across national borders but also because local dynamics shape/influence the global and vice versa.

We believe that scholarship can and should influence not only social policy toward becoming more diverse (and not just driven by political and economic forces), but also shape future research, institutional programs, curriculum, and pedagogy and programs with other objectives that international education can achieve. Of course, there is nothing inherently problematic about economic and political forces shaping international education; but they are in themselves not sufficient and may not help address certain needs or achieve certain goals, especially the goals of global social mobility, of making education a means of advancing humanitarian causes, of advancing social justice and economic equity across vast inequalities in the world. In fact, even scholars who don’t question the centrality of the market-based international education that is politically dominated by the UK and US, such as Altbach and de Wit (2017), have expressed concerns about the undermining of socially driven programs such as the Fulbright and ERASMUS. They have alerted us about the adverse consequences of the policies of Trump administration and Brexit decisions, including increasing intolerance and xenophobia, disruptions to transnational research, weakened collaboration through branch and satellite campuses, and perception of the prestigious international education programs as elitist and “globalist.”

We, as editors, and the contributing authors of this book ask new questions toward forging new avenues of research and scholarship on international higher education. How can research and scholarship advance the diverse set of perspectives and values about global international education? Who should the scholars speak to and how can they influence them? What are the points of intervention and leverage in institutional policy and programs in the universities? We believe that first of all, there is a need for scholars themselves to hit the reset button on some of the dominant narratives about international education. For instance, the majority of scholars working with or even engaged in research on international students continue to focus on a roster of popular topics, often conducting innovative research but noticing the same old problems such as language proficiency, cultural difference, and lack of intellectual honesty among international students as the most significant in their research findings—instead of exploring contexts, connections, or complexities behind these appearances. Most academic scholars and staff members continue to complacently embrace and reinforce old narratives, whether it is out of self-interest inherent in the model of their professional work, lack of critical thinking due to the acceptance of dominant narratives, inability to penetrate researched/informed perspectives, or the unwillingness to question the nationalistic and geopolitical framing of the whole enterprise of international education. As a result, we find it necessary to identify a range of new topics, as well as new methods, theories, and perspectives to explore those topics. Scholarship must and can expose the pitfalls of deficit framing, nationalistic frameworks, and hemispheric perspectives (whereby students simply pursue certain national destinations or popular narratives such as the “American Dream”); international education must have higher ideals to attend to as well.

The current disruptions in international education are not just undermining all that was desirable; they are also exposing the faultlines of what seemed normal and desirable. The politics have exposed that there was a longer trajectory from models driven by at least partially idealistic thinking by nations toward a market (and competition among the nations) that lacked similar ideals. For instance, national programs such as the Fulbright scholarship, East-West scholarship, and Peace Corps program in the United States were a historically significant counterpoint to market logic dominating today’s international education. But so were the ideas of Nalanda University of ancient South Asia, where scholars gathered from far and wide, the Academy of Greece, and the other institutions of higher learning we mentioned above. It is time for scholars to, pause, reflect, and study the faultlines of economic logic and its pitfalls; to use the scholarship to educate and influence other scholars; to use research for rethinking and redesigning academic programs and pedagogies; and to develop new approaches and directions of research and discourse about international education.

The volume builds on critical insights available in some past scholarship, (e.g., the global public good, as posited by Marginson (2011) internationalization and globalization in higher education as defined by scholars (Altbach & de Wit, 2017; Ata, Tran, & Liyanage, 2018; de Wit, Gacel-Avila, Jones, & Jooste, 2017; Bhattacharya, 2017; Oleksiyenko, 2018 ; Johnson, 2018; Mervis, 2017; Paraskeva, 2016; Peterson, 2018; Quilantan, 2018; Read, 2018; Saul, 2017; Stanley, 2017; Wilson, 2016, and misconceptions thereof. We draw on this scholarship to develop critical questions that practitioners at various levels can begin to answer. There is also some scholarship that has either paid attention to the geopolitics and the increasing domination of international education by political economies and its often fickle forces or, in some cases, confronted the challenge and envisioned different frameworks for global learner mobility and advancement of knowledge with sharper focus. Here we would like to mention just a few of the scholars whose work inspire our thinking and whose perspectives we borrow and build upon. Marginson (2007, 2017, 2018) is one of the scholars in this area who has proposed new approaches to international education by pointing out serious flaws of the current nationalistic regime of international education. Marginson (2018) highlights that “[i]t is hard for national systems of regulations to encompass cross-border persons. It is harder for the students, at the sharp end of national-global ambiguities and tensions” (p. 10). He shows how the nationalistic framing of education leads to “othering” of students from another country and how the nationalistic “master othering” leads to various challenges for students, “including racist Othering, the exclusions, and the abuse and violence.” Furthermore, the “duality of citizen/non-citizen shelters, legitimates, and amplifies the other subordinations,” said Marginson, even as international students are celebrated for their contribution in “diversifying the campus” or helping “internationalize” higher education. In the specific context of writing education and focusing on the local front of higher education in the United States, Scott (2016) discusses how the “political economy” of international student enrollment is part of a financial politics of neoliberal economy, instead of being driven by a global educational mission, as Sharma (2018) has further argued by building on Scott’s work. Scott (2016) used the case of outsourcing to make a larger point about the political economy of internationalization: “Under neoliberal political economic reorganization, global economies have seen a forty-year trend toward the privatization of everything from local mail delivery to national security and intelligence to public education” (p. 13). Scott challenges scholars to not “accept that neoliberalization is inevitable and that we can’t do postsecondary writing education in a way that is research-informed, ethically conscientious, and engaged with the realities of global communication and labor” (p. 26), emphasizing the impact of neoliberal economics of international education on faculty labor and the integrity of higher education itself. A group of scholars in Australia who focus more directly on international education, have pointed out the need to confront the need to “reciprocate” the adjustment that international make with adaptations that higher education institutions must make to the changing demographic, for effective engagement, and mutual benefit (Bartram, 2018; Liyanage, Tran, & Ata, 2018; Tran & Gomes, 2017; Tran & Nyland, 2017). Writing along with other scholars, Tran has further argued that “[s]uccessful interaction, if only to achieve disagreement, and the possibility of situated (re)structuring of knowledge of the world necessitates individual other-orientation” notes Tran, arguing that that orientation “implies a reciprocity of perspectives, the attempt to perceive the world from the perspective of the ‘other’, a fundamental tenet of the global citizenship” (Liyanage et al., 2018, p. 3). Citing some other scholars, the authors have highlighted the need for scholars to understand that

Today’s internationalized higher education is of a different order because of its scale, ease of movement, much more widespread demand for higher education in a knowledge economy… commodification and commercialization of knowledge as assets and services… owned by nation states, and disparate knowledges and cultural/academic practices that are in contact. The difference is also exacerbated also by nation states’ migration policies, human capacity development, public diplomacy, promotion of ICT in education, and establishment of offshore online international education.… (p. 3)

Fegan and Field (2009) also highlighted the pitfalls of traditional narratives about international education; for instance, these authors discuss a tendency behind the scholarship to equate “internationalization” with “Westernization” and globalization with “Americanization.” They argue that learning needs to account for various levels of context, from the local to global, with each adding a layer of citizenship to individuals in a knowledge-based and globalized society. But the “uncritical acceptance” of the notion that the “West is the best,” which they call “at best ludicrous, and at worst, irresponsible” (p. 12) seriously hinders productive conversations about the role of international education for people in dominant as well as peripheral geopolitical locations.

Complementing to the scholarship that provides a broad response to the current regime of international students, a number of scholars have presented research and perspectives focusing on specific themes that advance new perspectives that we seek to advance here, including issues that are prompted by the current political disruptions of international education. A growing body of emerging scholarship has directly responded the some specific current issues and challenges such as healthcare and wellbeing and other psychological issues of international students (Gan & Forbes-Mewett, 2018), stress-driven spending behavior and college decision making (Lou & Byun, 2018), post-graduation plans and labor market differences (Adamuti-Trache, 2019; Alberts, 2019; Cantwell, Lee, & Mlambo, 2018; Tran, Rahimi, & Tan, 2019), and impact of MOOCS and student experience in online classes (Karkar-Esperat, 2018; Sharma, 2018). Although the current political upheaval and rapidly changing immigration issues have been generating status anxiety, social pressure, and confusions for both international students and foreign-born faculty members in the United States, many scholars and institutional leaders have advocated for a more humane world and highlighted the opportunities and insights and positive impact in the workforce as a result of crossing the borders and boundaries and cross-cultural engagement between domestic and international students in academia (Choudaha, 2018; Gaulee, 2019; Glass, 2018; Showalter, 2018). While rethinking international student identities (e.g., queer student experience, stereotypes and microaggression) and wellbeing experiences (e.g., mental health), some recent publications (Ata et al., 2018; Bista, 2019; Cabrera, 2018; Oleksiyenko, 2018) have suggested the growing use of technology and collaborative initiatives to look into the social and educational issues and challenges of international students where authors focus on personalized professional support to succeed each student, and creating respect and cross-cultural competence by reviewing existing institutional strategies and policies and by creating flexible self-learning culture. Meanwhile, because of political upheavals in major destinations, international students are becoming increasingly aware of alternative countries (Showalter, 2018). Similarly, Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood (2017) highlight the impact of uncertain political times, such as in the form of xenophobia, violence, and psychological stress.

In addition to the work of academic scholars, some journalists have contributed meaningfully to the discourse about international education; while most of them seem to accept the status quo of the economic/nationalistic framework, some have adopted the lens of economic justice and ethical thinking as well. Writing for the Atlantic magazine, McKenna (2015) highlights the issue of cost for international students with an example: “given that one year at NYU for tuition, room and board, and fees costs $66,022, it would take the average Chinese family—with a yearly income of $2,100—decades to save enough money to afford attendance there.” As implied by McKenna, the increasing focus on revenue is dangerous on a global scale because it can prevent lower income students from around the world to pursue education across borders, thereby undermining the possibility of what Zakaria (2015) calls a “natural aristocracy” of talented people who acquire education and wealth by sheer commitment, rather than an “unnatural aristocracy” that is inherited by a certain class. In this situation, academic scholarship can and must guide universities in major destination countries toward cultivating the vision of global social mobility. In the Chronicle of Higher Education (e.g., Fischer, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2018), writers have reported on other factors including less aggressive recruiting agencies, high cost of U.S. tuition, global economic and political turmoil, and cut back on Brazilian and Saudi Arabian scholarships for decline statistics of international students in a time of heightened nationalist political rhetoric of the United States. Anderson and Svrluga (2018) report in the Washington Post that many institutions of higher education started receiving problems with student visa delays and denials and student decisions to enroll outside the United States. In this context, the bigger questions for the higher education institutional leaders and scholars are to look into the organizational capabilities to evaluate, respond, and develop initiatives that make experience of international students smooth and bring a positive change in the ecology of tertiary education.

The “rethinking” that this book calls for may be prompted most significantly by the political upheavals of recent years; but we also see a number of other reasons for refreshing scholarly perspectives and conversations about education across borders. The neoliberal regime of international education as a market, as a source of income for academic institutions and countries, or for that matter the nationalistic framing where international students are accepted for national interest, is not a recent creation. But these framings have become more and more dominant, increasingly taken for granted, over the decades. Shifting mobility and tensions have also been caused by convergences and divergences of social and geopolitical forces, especially due to increasing globalization; multidirectional mobility started becoming visible with the rise of large economies (such as China and India) and the increasing interest among other developing countries to attract international students (e.g., Mexico, South Africa). The ideals/ideologies about diversification of student body, globalized learning experience, cross-cultural engagements, and in some cases greater justice through educational opportunities have driven some of the trends in higher education over the years. The rapid digital revolutions and changes in the way people communicate ideas and access knowledge have also forced scholars to rethink international education; MOOCs and other forms of online education, for instance, have not only given rise to new forms of colonial dynamics on the global stage but also created new opportunities for education in global peripheries. New technologies are also facilitating teaching and learning transnationally, expanding the meaning and application of international education.

We certainly do not consider the economic or even the political/nationalistic regime of international education as inherently flawed. We instead see the need for other perspectives and understanding about international education to be taken up equally seriously by scholars, policy makers, and politicians alike—to be advanced as equally respectable and for practically important reasons toward promoting international education. Indeed, scholars may need to begin by acknowledging and highlighting the economic benefits and national interest in order to start communicating the importance of international education. According to National Foundation for American Policy, the number of jobs created in immigrant-founded billion-dollar companies, revealing an average of more than 1,200 employees per company, the vast majority of the jobs in the United States (Anderson, 2018a, 2018b). For example, Uber was the largest source of employment for an immigrant-founded billion-dollar company with 9,382 employees in the U.S. as of December 2017, as well as 3 million active drivers. Similarly, SpaceX was second with 7,000 employees, followed by WeWork (6,000), Mu Sigma (3,500), Palantir Technologies (2,000), Unity Technologies (2,000), Houzz (1,800), Sprinklr (1,400), Warby Parker (1,400), Medallia (1,300), Zoom Video (1,300), Apttus (1,200), CrowdStrike (1,200), Rubrik (1,200), Anaplan (1,150), Stripe (1,100), Compass (1,000), Peloton (1,000), and Slack (1,000). Many former international students have become the founders of one-quarter (20 of 91) most exciting and innovative billion-dollar startup companies in the United States. Elon Musk, for instance, started the company SpaceX, which employs 7,000 people and is worth 21 billion USD, with Adam Neuman, who started WeWork that is worth more than 20 billion dollars and employs 6,000 people. John and Patrick Collison, Noubar Afeyan, and Vlad Tenev are other former international students who founded or cofounded companies whose worth already exceed five billion USD (NFAP, 2018). As indicated in the National Foundation for American Policy, the leading countries of origin for the immigrant founders of billion-dollar companies are Canada and Israel with 9 immigrants each, India (8), the United Kingdom (7), China (6), Germany (4), France (3), Ireland (3), Russia (3), Australia (2), Ukraine (2), and 14 other countries with one entrepreneur—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Denmark, Iraq, Italy, Lebanon, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Uzbekistan and Vietnam (Anderson, 2018a, 2018b). In the telling chart Table 1.1 from National Geographic, we see similar presence of immigrant scholars among US Nobel laureates (Greshko, 2018).

Table 1.1 Nobel prize leaders in various disciplines—thanks to immigrants
Full size table

Thus, in the particular case of the United States, on the more pragmatic side, there is a history as long as the history of this nation showing the towering contributions made to the advancement of knowledge and its disciplines by its immigrants. Such contribution, understood in political and economic terms by many, inspires nations to view immigrants positively; it boosts their self-interest while creating greater acceptance of the immigrant. Ranging from scientists like Albert Einstein to diplomats like Madeleine Albright, and from writers like Junot Díaz to cultural icons like Rihanna, people who were displaced or otherwise moved to the US have made remarkable contributions to the nation and to the world. Indeed, Jesus Christ was banished from his society, and Karl Marx was stateless for much of his later life; everywhere in the world, from the likes of Malala Yousafzai to Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, both involuntary displacement and voluntary mobility have produced some of the greatest minds that have shaped the course of human history. What the dominant political-economic argument about the educated immigrant and mobile scholar obscures are the equally or more important issues: social, global, intellectual, ethical, and humanitarian.

That is, we first urge scholars to first transcend economics and politics, then explore the needs and benefits of international education in a variety of ways. Our argument is that the greatest need for global mobility of the learner, the learned, and aspiring to learn is about the immeasurable potential to be realized for the nations and, more importantly, unprecedented justice to be done to humanity at large—including the individuals who drive the advancement of knowledge and its use for human good. On the one hand, the challenges that are emerging at the intersection of international education and local politics and economics must be addressed; on the other, to address those challenges and to show the good that can come out of bolder visions and missions, scholars need a seat at the table. In times of economic and political difficulty, scholars must provide the vision that institutional leaders and even policy makers at the national levels need; otherwise, as the horizons of thought about global mobility of students and scholars (along with other groups of people) narrows, scholars and their mission for internationalization of education will be squeezed into and out of the margins. Scholars of international education can and must play larger roles.

In the wake of major political upheavals and their disruptive effects on international higher education, advocacy for international students and education has evidently increased. Our observation was before the current political climate, even liberal-minded scholars seemed to take for granted the nationalistic regime of international education, as well as the economic determinism undergirding that regime. As nativistic political waves take over political systems in many countries across the world, we have observed some intellectual backlash against it, including in the voices of academic leaders who have articulated their support and defense of international education and scholars/students by adopting frameworks of social justice (as well as national interest). Of course, mainstream discourses about international education remain predominantly driven by economic interests, not just among the administrative class that bears institutional responsibilities related to balancing budgets and sustaining programs but also among scholars who ought to advance social, ethical, political, disciplinary, professional, as well as economic perspectives on the issue. In fact, partly in response to that dominant interest in using international students as a source of income, a variety of stakeholders seem to have become significantly more sensitive to the mercenary nature of international education today; we hear or read more students, scholars, and even journalists respond more articulately about the jeopardies of nativist waves that are undermining the global mission of higher education. With the advancements in internet technology and social media, and the backlash against nativist politics that new media facilitates, even the general public (whether opposed to or supportive of nativism) has become more informed and sensitive about the value of international education as part of globalization; more people are aware of the importance of higher education as one of the transnational social institutions that advance critical missions in the interest of humanity at large. If nothing, more people are exposed to conversations about the importance of scientists and engineers, economists and philosophers who are an asset of the world at large. That is, the agenda of international education is likely to have shifted from being a domain of the experts and a minority of people shaping the politics and policies to being a broader public discourse. In this environment, many scholars have begun to address emerging issues in general and particular ways.

In addition to the slow, positive start by scholars toward addressing the disruptions brought about by the political upheavals in recent years, we believe that there is an urgent need for developing bolder and more visionary frameworks for advancing the discourse about international education that is more multidimensional and robust. The dominant economic framework has the potential—which we argue must be harnessed—for advancing a global social vision, allowing for political and policy collaborations among nations and academic institutions alike and prompting scholars to advance social, political, disciplinary, professional, and even morally driven discourses about international education. The economics of international education doesn’t have to be just an end; it can and must be a means toward broader social/global goals as well. Conversations prompted by disruptions of established systems and norms can potentially expose the vices and create more room for advancing the virtues of current systems, encouraging and enabling stakeholders to think more clearly, boldly, and purposefully. That clearer thinking can facilitate better decisions, create better opportunities, and allow for the exploration/realizations of new possibilities. For those things to happen, scholars must take the disruptions seriously, make sense of them, and use their research and scholarship to generate and advance a broader global vision of education across borders. We must ask questions that go beyond the framework in which we think and work, research and share knowledge. What does it mean, for instance, for prestigious “world-class” universities (such as the Ivy Leagues) to consider their position as “global leaders” in higher education or even leaders in certain disciplines of knowledge internationally? Does that invite or challenge the institutions to bear certain responsibilities toward the world of education or areas of it, toward the people who trust the institutions’ “global” positions and prestige, toward the students who come to their gates with that trust? In the case of public institutions that are funded by nations and local governments, how do the institutions justify the investment in students from beyond the local and national borders, the return on investment for the students from outside who pay significantly higher price for education, and the “global mission” that they claim to be part of their social objectives? What roles and responsibilities does any institution participating in the “internationalization” of higher education bear to students in war-torn nations in faraway places, to students who are politically displaced and economically unable to pay for the “international” education? What professional, ethical, and humanistic obligation does the “international” scholar or a scholar specializing in “international education” have toward students across political borders and economic stratifications who aspire to pursue their dreams to learn, regardless their ability to get a visa to travel or a bank account to support the expense? Thanks in part, rather ironically, to the disruption of the established order and the gradual domination of a political economy to the detriment of other perspectives about international higher education, we hope that scholars across borders and scholars studying issues of education across those borders will increasingly advance the social view of education as much as economic, humanistic as much as nationalistic, ethical and philosophical as much as political. We envisioned this book as a step in that direction.