opportunities for U.S. and international students to learn from one another out-
side the classroom, such as buddy programs, meeting places, and international
residence halls or roommate programs.” Ratios refer only to the mere presence of
international students on campus but not on their impact for the learning process
of domestic or foreign students. Therefore any assessment of a university’s inter-
nationalization success based solely on the ratios and their comparison is undenia-
bly incomplete.
The German CHE even explicitly defined input and output indicators and set
them into a functional relation. However most studies do this implicitly by analyz-
ing the amount of money a university spends for internationalization and using the
number of international publications or the amount of external funding for inter-
national research projects as a proxy for the return of investment. The mapping
model (based on ratios) developed by Elkin/Devjee/Farnsworth (2005, p. 323) for
example is recommended by authors to use as an investment tool for university
managers. “Usually institutions have limited resources. As a result, activities need
to focus on where they will most improve internationalization. This is often where
the internationalization dimension is of great importance and where there is a ma-
jor difference between desired and actual performance. This will maximize the
return of investment.” Obviously this is a major problem of university internation-
alization: it does not fit well into input/output categories. This is because the
learning and reflection process of students stimulated by interaction with foreign
students cannot be measured in financial terms. Using proxy variables for counting
the output like the number of international publications makes no sense because it
does not refer to internationalization and the individual learning process. Here
again the general problem of a market oriented university management comes up:
Bildung, Learning and Education are all terms which cannot be controlled and
monitored like business processes in a corporation. Subsequently the investment
approach of measuring success in internationalization leads in the wrong direction
or, to speak in business terms, it leads to false management decisions about future
institutional activity resource investments. Efficiency of the use of invested tax-
payer’s money for the purpose of internationalization could be measured by the
individual’s progress in edification. However, these individual utility units are not
convertible in cash terms, but they are nevertheless most important for the society
as a whole.
Internationalization can’t be an isolated activity of university management and has
to be consciously embedded in an overall concept of learning. Otherwise it often
fails to have the desired impact on the individual’s learning process. Subsequently
11