Internationalisation and the Marketing of Higher Education. Australian Universities Best Practices

Professorial Dissertation from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 10, Università degli Studi di Milano, language: English, abstract: This study aims to explore the internationalisation in higher education in Australia. The increasing globalisation and interdependence of world economies, and the revolution in ICTs (information and communication technologies) have made it imperative for universities to be truly international in character and outlook. The result of this study on the Australian educational scenario has revealed that internationalisation of higher education is a complex, multidimensional and often fragmented process that includes different rationales varying greatly according to cultural and economic insights: it ranges from international research collaboration, to horizontal mobility for both international and national students as well as a focus on a more interdisciplinary and international curricula. Overall, by comparison with the other Anglo-Saxon countries, the results of this study have shown that the development of internationalisation in higher education in Australia has three peculiar features: the first is the unambiguously commercial nature, according to which innovative strategies (such as a proper destination branding borrowed from the tourism industry) were put in place through promotional recruiting agencies abroad and other national entities that sponsored a massive participation in student recruitment fairs. Secondly, there was an exponential market growth of non-academic student servicing, which surpassed academic and research capacity: as a result of this marketing and recruitment as well as complimentary services are managed by commercial companies associated with the university. The third and final feature specific to Australia is its ability to be a pioneer in the provision of educational opportunities overseas through the development of offshore campuses