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Darla K. Deardorff, Hans de Wit, John D. Heyl, and Tony Adams (Eds.). The SAGE Handbook of International Higher Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012. 552 pp. Cloth: $150.00; ISBN: 978-1-4129-9921-2.
Higher education has experienced a dramatic change with regard to the internationalization of educational programs in the academy in recent decades. The editors define the internationalization of higher education (IHE) as "the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education" (p. 29).
In the past, international education efforts were usually a functional department in institutions, but now those functions have become one of the central priorities of higher education institutions, nationally and internationally. In the course of this transformation, not only this practical application, but also the conceptual understanding of the role of international education has evolved significantly. With these changes, opportunities, and challenges, the related scholarly study of this field has developed from, in essence, a patchwork of occasional pieces to a more formalized and systematic line of inquiry. It underscores the need for a comprehensive attempt to review various theoretical and practical issues to reflect the changing circumstances of globalization in higher education.
The joint effort of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) and the Sage Publications, The SAGE Handbook of International Higher Education moves toward filling this gap by inviting prominent educators and scholars from all over the world to document the new issues, trends, and concepts of IHE, and to offer strategies for further developing IHE in a changing global context. As stated in the preface, the editors hope to reach "for a more strategic approach to internationalization that goes beyond its (presumed) component parts and aims at changing the quality of higher education itself" (p. xi). Internationalization in the context of higher education is not the end, but rather the means to realize the objectives of higher education: to train globally competent citizens.
In line with this purpose, the handbook is written to incorporate the following two organizational and conceptual approaches: first, it is more a theoretical review of current research and practices through a well-organized collection of chapters than a collection of case studies or a compendium of best practices. The handbook makes the point that every...