Evaluating the unquantifiableA case study examining the transformative outcomes of international higher education

Resumen

The internationalisation of higher education has been high on the agenda of governments and educational institutions for the past decades, driven by a wide range of instrumental and humanistic rationales. Concomitantly, as public and private investments to incorporate the international dimension in higher education grew, there emerged a need for stakeholders to implement programme evaluations to respond to both external and internal demands for learning and accountability. In this scenario, quantifiable indicators have become dominant outcome measures due to the flexibility, clarity, comparability, and transparency they facilitate. However, this practice presents a few caveats, such as undermining the unquantifiable contributions of international higher education for student and societal transformation. Through a compendium of three publications, the overarching objective of this dissertation is to employ an explanatory and transformation-based approach to evaluating the outcomes of international higher education. Firstly, it frames Martha Nussbaum’s capability achievements as fundamental to a positively transformative education, thus providing a sound basis for judgments of educational programmes’ worth and legitimacy based on unquantifiable yet equally meaningful standards. Secondly, it draws on critical realism as a metatheory to substantiate the importance of adopting qualitative and explanatory approaches in evaluations conducted in the education domain. Additionally, this work contributes to ethical practices in social research by addressing the methodological and ethical implications of collecting data involving a geographically dispersed international student population. This work adopts an embedded case study research design, whereby a single case (an international master’s programme in education studies) is built around multiple units of analysis (international students). Publications 1 and 3 examine the case programme outcomes, with the former being descriptive and policy-based and the latter more explanatory hinging on social and philosophical theories. Publication 2 tackles the ethical dimension of the internet-based methods adopted in Publications 1 and 3. The analysis found that the international education programme analyzed was instrumental in the development of participants’ capabilities pertaining to their intellectual, social, and professional lives. These capability achievements were mediated by the programme’s international and non-international features as well as a combination of agentic and structural factors. For work capabilities, structural factors have induced a particularly modulating effect, with historical events, hiring practices, and employer expectations playing a significant role in students’ employment outcomes. In relation to the ethical dimension of online data collection, it was found that the internet offers a rich and convenient means for obtaining quantitative and qualitative while also generating a number of ethical concerns. As such, specific considerations are outlined with regard to adapting traditional ethical guidelines in the online context. Overall, this dissertation offers both theoretical and methodological insights towards a kind of higher education that is ethical, impactful, and supportive of individual and collective flourishing.