The Study On Teichler’s Thoughts Of Internationalisation Of Higher Education

Ulrich Teichler is a representative figure in the field of international higher education research,internationalization of higher education is one of his key research themes.This paper attempts to summarize and analyze the main idea of Teichler in this area,including the definition,the types,the affecting factors,the benefits and drawbacks,the historical developments and the development tendencies of internationalization of higher education.Teichler is really a great master,his thoughts and ideas are dramatically different from others,the biggest difference is that he considers and discusses internationalization of higher education from a highly elevated perspective,far beyond the confines of the nation-state or civilizations.In other words,he takes the benefit of all human beings as priority.Besides,he is a typical German,his research just reveals the peculiar pragmatic and rigorous spirit of Germany.He tends to transform theoretical problems into practical activities,and vice versa.What’s more,Teichler is very good at making international comparison rooted in particular traditional culture and national characteristic of every country,combining qualitative and quantitative research methods and multidisciplinary methods based on themes.However,even though he is really a great master,his ideological system is not so comprehensive which is because the unique subject characteristics of higher education.His main idea is that internationalization of higher education implies the increased activities of academic knowledge and academic culture across national or cultural borders along with which appearing a trend towards increase of systematic and possibly also experiential confrontation.Teichler reminds us that the increase of cross-border activities is in a situation of consistently maintaining and largely fuzziness of national borders which will lead to different strategies and activities,because people’s understandings and standpoints are extraordinarily different.In Teichler’s perspective,internationality of higher education is not so much a single phenomenon as softer depicted in the public debate or in research discourse,which has concrete content and real strength.Certainly,international mobility and cooperation of higher education takes different directions and is expected to serve different functions.In fact,these functions do not only address the cognitive domain,but also contain values which linked to them: International cooperation and mobility might reinforce thinking of parochialism and notions of rivalry and chauvinism,but also might contribute to international understandings.However,we are moving towards a knowledge society where international understanding of many people is important.This study shows that Teichler’s thoughts of internationalization of higher education is a magnificent treasure,not only instructive for the discipline construction of higher education and practical activities of international mobility and cooperation,but also for higher education research.Through international comparison and serious study,the author identified that Chinese internationalization of higher education currently is in the transition stage of reform.Besides,this paper offers a proposal-“trinity reform scheme”-which takes “internationalization at home” as the priority.It is no doubt that Chinese internationalization of higher education will inevitably step toward a higher stage with the further development of hard power and soft power.