Strategy aims to grow international connections and reputation

The University's Internationalisation Strategy for 2011-15 was launched this week, in what Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey described as an important watershed for Massey.

In University House on Wednesday Mr Maharey told a large audience of staff that Massey had always been an international university in that significant numbers of staff and students came to it from a variety of countries and the staff regularly participated in international conferences and seminars. However, the traditional approach to internationalisation – of simply recruiting overseas students to come to Massey to study – had now changed to reflect "a different era".

Massey was now engaging students with international students in different ways, including by distance education, by taking its staff and teaching resources to other countries and by collaborating with overseas tertiary education providers to provide blended qualifications that enable students to study for one or two years in their own country then complete the qualification with one or two years at Massey.

"We have to be very clear about what we do and why we do it," he said. "It cannot simply be about raising money. It has to be about reputation."

He said rankings agencies looked closely at internationalisation when measuring the performance or relative quality of a university and added that "the company you keep will determine how you are judged", making it vital to collaborate with institutions with excellent and compatible reputations.

The purpose of the strategy is to position Massey internationally as New Zealand's defining university, using its areas of discipline strength and its ability to provide a unique education with a distinctive New Zealand flavour to international students wherever they study and by whatever mode of learning.

Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Academic and International) Professor Ingrid Day, who developed the strategy, said it set "aggressive targets" but these were achievable if "we go about it in this comprehensive way".

Considerations include:

• ensuring an appropriate ratio of international and domestic students on each campus, and ensuring a culturally diverse mix of students
• increasing the transition to Massey of international students studying at non-tertiary institutions within New Zealand
• increasing the numbers of inbound and outbound exchange students, and
• significantly expanding the number of students studying with Massey from offshore locations.

Professor Day said Massey was on track to increase its international EFTS in 2011.

The University has recently undertaken a benchmarking exercise with international agency QS and had been awarded five stars (out of five) for internationalisation. This is an outstanding achievement, which reflects Massey’s accomplishments and positions it well to achieve the strategy’s goals.

She thanked staff for their considerable input into the strategy and urged them to support it by "value-adding" to any international travel they did to reinforce connections developed by colleagues with educational institutions and other overseas organisations.

Her team would be responsible for action plans developed in six areas – international relations; international student marketing, recruitment and admission; international student support, engagement and retention; building capacity; internationalising the academic environment and learning experience; and transnational and offshore distance education.

The University's Teaching, Learning and Distance Education director Associate Professor Mark Brown discussed the recently launched Distance Education International Prospectus, which profiles some of the degrees, qualifications and short courses available to international distance learners.

International director Bruce Graham discussed the recent developments with Education New Zealand and the increased emphasis the Government has placed on growing international education, which already contributes and estimated $2.3 billion to the New Zealand' economy.

Later the same day Professor Day and Mr Maharey hosted a visit by Professor Ansary Ahmed, the President and chief executive officer of Asia-e University in Malaysia. Asia-e is the Malaysian government’s initiative to promote distance education in the 30 member countries of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue. Mr Maharey and Mr Graham visited Asia-e last month and it was decided the two universities would sign a memorandum of understanding to explore joint development of distance education in the region.

This collaboration provides a framework where common areas of mutual interest can be identified along with the joint development and implementation of proposals. Some of these areas include the joint development and delivery of distance education in Asia as well as collaborative research projects into teaching and learning pedagogy.

The signing was witnessed by key academic representatives from the College of Business, the College of Education, the College of Sciences and the Centre for Professional and Continuing Education.