Why Are Universities So International?
This is an interesting post about internationalization in universities. The Faculty in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth provides a good illustration. It includes seven people, only two of whom were born in Ireland. The others were born in the Netherlands, Norway, Czech Republic, USA and UK. The blog post says there are two reasons why universities are so international: specialization and diversification. Both of these do apply, but there is a third reason, which concerns personal life, love, the pursuit of happiness, politics, and so on. I gave my reasons for moving to Ireland here.
The personal dimension shouldn’t be ignored, though it is much more complex than the others. Academics are people after all.
Worldwide, only about one in thirty people live in a different country from where they were born. Wander onto a university campus, though, and you may get a different impression. The bigger the university and the stronger its research, the more international its employees become. You’ll see international PhD students, international professors, and especially international temporary researchers like postdocs.
I’ve met quite a few people who are surprised by this. I hear the same question again and again, from curious Danes at outreach events to a tired border guard in the pre-clearance area of the Toronto airport: why are you, an American, working here?
It’s not, on the face of it, an unreasonable question. Moving internationally is hard and expensive. You may have to take your possessions across the ocean, learn new languages and customs, and navigate an unfamiliar bureaucracy. You begin as a temporary resident, not…
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In the Dark 
April 16, 2023 at 9:29 am
One would imagine that the biggest and best universities can attract the best people – and hence have a bigger ‘pool’ of talent from which to pick, with researchers from many countries wanting to work in them. I’d be interested to know if Brexit has had an impact on the recruitment of staff at Oxford and Cambridge, for example. Perhaps from the EU? I wonder about non-EU countries.
April 16, 2023 at 11:15 am
I’d also be interested to know the answer to your question! One has to take into account that there are “push” factors too – some countries have so few opportunities that people are effectively compelled to move abroad. Italy is an example.
April 16, 2023 at 10:48 am
How international universities are differs quite a lot between fields and countries. Here in Portugal ‘endogamy’ is quite widespread in several areas – I just read a piece here quoting statistics that both in Lisbon and Coimbra >75% of university staff did their PhD at the university they now teach – in some areas it is 100%. Not a lot of space for internationalisation there. (and plenty of space for abusive relationships which was the topic of the opinion piece I read).
In astrophysics/cosmology it is much more mixed at non-permanent position level but staff level is quite different.
Now, returning to your point about the personal dimension – I fully sympathise with that as I work in Portugal for that reason, but I would have thought that that applies to all areas and would not make academia noticeably different?
April 16, 2023 at 11:12 am
I suspect what you say about Portugal is also true to some extent of Spain and Italy, but that does of course depend on the discipline too.
As for other disciplines, I think it probably does apply to other areas too, but probably more so for those careers that start with a university education (e.g. law and medicine).