International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
My 100th blog Posted on by Vicky Lewis
Time for a reflective piece, since this is the 100th blog I’ve posted on the News and Views section of my website.
My first one was in May 2014, so I’ve been using blogging as an outlet for over a decade now, with an output rate of roughly ten a year.
It was interesting looking back over my blog archive. I stumbled across various things I’d forgotten I’d written about!
So, how has my focus changed? What have I learned? Which were the most popular blogs? And what next?
Looking at the early blogs, I can see direct links in the content to:
Sometimes work I did provided material for a whole series of blogs. There was one on International Education Hubs, inspired by speaking on this topic at the 2016 UK-NARIC conference.
One thing that struck me, dipping back into old blogs, is that ‘everything’s changed, but nothing’s changed’.
While 2016 feels like a lifetime ago, a blog I wrote then called ‘Whither UK HE Internationalisation?’ is just as applicable today. OK, scrap the comment about Canada welcoming international students with open arms. But the rest of it sounds alarmingly familiar.
In it, I suggest that the sector had ‘started to take for granted our ability to attract international student and staff talent to the UK’. And I argue that there is an opportunity to shift the dominant driver for UK international strategies away from income generation and to explore a wider range of ways to ‘be international’.
More recently, a good deal of my blog content has revolved around international strategies. Strategy-related blog series include one based on my 2021 Global Strategies Report (which generated over a dozen blogs); another on ethical international strategies; and a further one on the process of developing an institutional international strategy.
But it’s the personal reflections that often seem to resonate most with people. To mark my 30 years in international HE earlier this year, I wrote a series called ‘A journey through time’, with decade-by-decade snapshots. The first one (1994-2004) drew a lot of traffic – and some happy reminiscences on LinkedIn!
Another popular blog was one about taking time out to sort through my late mum’s writings, drawings, photos and other memorabilia, which seemed to strike a chord with people on a number of different levels.
Well, I’ve learned that it’s difficult to predict which topics are going to catch people’s interest. And I’ve learned that, despite my best intentions, I struggle to post at regular intervals.
You can always tell when my consultancy and other work is taking up all my time and headspace because there’s a dearth of blogs. And, conversely, I post a lot more when I’ve got more capacity to pause and reflect.
My planning of blog topics is a bit haphazard but I’ve enjoyed writing some recently which highlight good practice in our sector, for example on Southampton and Imperial’s overseas presence; and on University of East London’s employer engagement in India. We need to celebrate new approaches and positive developments during the current challenging period for UK HE, so I plan to do more of that.
And I hope my involvement on the EAIE thematic committee for Leadership, Strategy and Policy will give me opportunities to learn more about HE innovations in other countries so that I can feed some fresh ideas into future blogs.
In the meantime, many thanks to all those who have engaged with my blogs or contributed comments (usually via LinkedIn). It's always gratifying to have sparked a discussion and I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.
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