The Internationalisation of American Higher Education: A Positional Competition Perspective

Overview & Synopsis

This paper examines the potential negative consequences of the internationalisation of American higher education from the perspective of positional competition theory. This analysis suggests that internationalisation efforts undertaken by colleges and universities contribute to positional competition between students vying for admission, between graduates competing for prestigious, well-paying jobs, and between higher education institutions themselves, who compete for prestige. As positional competition necessarily involves displacing other in obtaining advantage for one's self, the paper further describes how the positional competition engendered in part by the internationalisation of higher education contributes to the replication of social patterns of inequality.