Enriching the learning experience of both international and domestic students

Universities have had international orientations for centuries, exchanging ideas, students and scholars to enhance harmony and cooperation between countries, and, before that, between city states as geographically and culturally diverse as Chang’an, Constantinople and Oxford (Downy, Gray, Hall & Singh, 2018; Zajda, 2020). In the late 20^th century, globalisation hastened the internationalisation of universities and a more competitive form of internationalisation became evident. This has been characterised by a focus on university rankings and on international students as a source of economic benefit during a time of declining government funding for universities (de Wit, 2019; Fumasoli, 2019; Jones & de Wit, 2012). In Australia since March 2020, this discourse has been particularly evident, and the value of the learning experiences created by international education has been subsumed by discussions of economic benefits. In this presentation, we refocused the internationalisation discussion by using our own experiences as tertiary educators to demonstrate the benefits of internationalisation for both international and domestic students.