Internationalization of Work Content and Professional Networks

Abstract

American academics seem no more likely now than they were 15 years ago to bring international perspectives into their teaching and research or to collaborate with international colleagues in research and publication. In both 1992 and 2007, American professors emerged near the bottom of the distribution of professors from 19 nations in both of these areas—in 1992 sharing the bottom with Russia and Brazil and in 2007 sharing the bottom with China, Brazil, and Japan. Beyond their continued overall insularity, our analyses suggest that internationalization is more likely a multidimensional than a unidimensional construct. Integrating an international perspective in one’s teaching seems to be largely independent of doing so in one’s research. Moreover, the attitudinal integration of an international perspective seems independent of its behavioral expression, that is, faculty may collaborate with foreign colleagues in research and publication, but may not report that they integrate international perspectives into their teaching and/or research.