Researching Internationalisation in Indian Higher Education: Complexity, Evaluation and Futures

What does internationalisation as policy do to universities, faculty, and students? How can we adequately capture its complexity, bringing together macropolitical influences and micro-level sense-making and implementation? How should we judge its outcomes? Drawing on my research on internationalisation in higher education in India – multiple case study research combining policy document analysis since 1990, and comparative institutional case studies including faculty interviews and student surveys – I examine stratified and sometimes contradictory impact of the same policy in comparable institutions, situated within the broader political economy of India. I bring data into conversation with World-Systems Theory, Glonacal Agency Heuristic and Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development framework, showing tensions that could not be adequately discussed at a single level of analysis. I argue that the normative evaluative criteria – Embeddedness, Equity, and Epistemic Integrity (EEI) – generated by these findings provides a way forward in evaluation by using criteria that focuses on grounded internationalisation in the Global South, beyond metrics like rankings. I conclude by exploring how participatory, reflective, and future-oriented methodologies can use these criteria to move from mapping complex higher education systems towards imaging and co-creating desirable and sustainable futures.