Under a Bright Star : Conceptualisation of Polytechnic Internationalisation, a Case study

Abstract

The boom in the internationalisation of education started somewhere at the beginning of the 1990s and seems to have no end. In the process of this study author has tried to shed light on what was understood by higher education internationalisation when the phenomenon still had an air of a novelty in the 1990s. The sphere of research are Finnish polytechnics, which were also a novelty introduced into the Finnish education system simultaneously with the mass internationalisation of higher education. The word “internationalisation” was used in a huge variety of contexts varying from an institution’s advertisements to curriculum design to national educational strategies.

The author of this study took part in establishing one of these new institutions, Laurea Polytechnic, originally launched as Vantaa Temporary Polytechnic (VAMK) in the City of Vantaa in 1991, expanded through mergers into Espoo-Vantaa Polytechnic at several locations in the Province of Uusimaa in 1996, and eventually licensed as Laurea Polytechnic in 2000.