Plenty on the table at internationalisation conference

International crowd: Between 300 and 400 delegates, mostly from South African universities but also from the rest of Africa and the globe, attended the IEASA conference hosted by UCT.

Some 300 delegates attended the 16^th Annual International Education Association of South Africa (IEASA) Conference, hosted by UCT from 29 August to 1 September.

And over three days and a programme packed wall-to-wall with plenaries, workshops and discussions, they had much to ponder. This included, as Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price summarised in his opening talk, questions of graduate attributes, ranking systems, the demands for spots at South African universities, the growing number of satellite campuses (set up "in our own backyard" by international universities), international research collaborations, international university networks, and the question of which students benefit most from international exchanges.

"The one thing that keeps me awake is the concern, as a leader in an institution of higher education, is that we are not really keeping up with the developments in internationalisation," Price told the meeting.

The conference included a leadership symposium of university leaders, chaired by Price, which discussed the role of university leadership in internationalisation; marked the launch of a special interest group on internationalisation in the curriculum; featured the signing of a historical memorandum of understanding between IEASA and the African Network for International of Education, or ANIE; and hosted the international launch of the SAGE Handbook of International Higher Education, and also the release of the 2012 edition of Study South Africa: The guide to South African higher education, suitably themed Partnerships and Global Scholarship.

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