Internationalisation of Finnish Higher Education as a Policy Driver in a Merger Process: Towards Competition, Collaboration, or Sustainability?

Abstract

This chapter aims to investigate internationalisation strategies and the ensuing identities of universities in a merger process. It focuses on examining how the approaches to institutional merger and internationalisation are intertwined in the Tampere case. Specifically, it investigates how mergers are justified by internationalisation in an institutional perspective, and how the national discourses on internationalisation are transferred to the merger process and used as arguments for mergers. The research questions are addressed by the conceptual frameworks of internationalization discourses and merger in higher education institutions that are useful for understanding the complex interaction between merger and internationalisation. Empirically, the study is based on qualitative documents. Our data consist of documents on the institutional level, as well as national strategies and agreement documents of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. To understand the role of internationalisation discourses in a merger process, we analyse the national internationalisation strategies, as well as documents related to the internationalisation of the newly merged Tampere University. Based on our findings, the predominant discourse was that of competition, while the discourse of collaboration seems to be relatively weak. The discourse of sustainable internationalisation remained on a rather general level, thereby offering no concrete justification for the merger, but rather appearing like greenwashing or window dressing.