Internationalization of higher education in the Philippines: between nationalism and co-optation?

In 2016, the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) officially released the Philippine’s key policy document on internationalization of the country’s higher education system. This was followed by vigorous efforts to promote internationalization activities, such as mobilities and bilateral partnerships. While many university leaders expressed their commitment to internationalization, many others from both public and private institutions rejected the policy due to concerns over fairness in terms of access to government resources and relevance of internationalization to their mandates. Against this backdrop, this study examined several national policy instruments issued between 1994 and 2019 that are directly and indirectly related to internationalization of higher education in the country. It employed the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) developed by R. Wodak et al. as a methodology to reveal how the concept of internationalization is translated, articulated, and enacted in the Philippines, and how its colonial history and its location in the ‘periphery’ of the global higher education landscape impact the strategies of codification and institutionalization of internationalization policies. The research results indicate an ‘ambivalent’ ideology characterized by nationalism and co-optation. They also raise questions about the western-centric understanding of internationalization (both as a policy and as a process) and of decolonization of internationalization of higher education.