Developing Holistic Indicators to Promote the Internationalization of Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific

The internationalization of higher education has been emphasized by the global community to improve access and quality in higher education (SDG4.3), as well as to achieve other global goals by promoting cross-cultural understanding and tolerance. Even though the internationalization of higher education has diverse dimensions, ‘student mobility’ has been a predominant indicator and there are conceptual and methodological challenges in the existing sources of data and statistics. In addition to student mobility, this document proposes a holistic set of indicators to capture other important dimensions of the internationalization of higher education, such as alignment with international normative instruments, international networking, governance and management, as well as the mobility of academics and programmes, etc. The suggested indicators are categorized into domains on two levels: system and institutional. It is hoped that this policy brief will help users better understand and adapt the indicators for use in their local contexts, so as to promote the internationalization of higher education.