Evidencing higher education for the common good

As Jane Austen might have said if she was working in higher education in the 21st century, it is a truth universally agreed that large research universities must be in want of global, national and local agendas that can be pursued at one and the same time. This three-way vision has driven university managers for two decades. Universities have vigorously built global activity and reputation while promising anyone who asked that their gut commitment to their locality was undiminished. Internationalisation has been presented as a universal good, as if to create a cross-border, cross-cultural or global connection is to automatically trigger a flow of all-round benefits, regardless of the content of the activity. This approach can be summed up as: ‘internationalisation – too much is not enough!. It has never been wholly convincing. Local and international agendas do not always sit easily next to each other. International students do bring vibrancy to localities, but not everybody meets those students or wants to start on the complexities of the cross-cultural journey. The trickle down from global research conferences to rural families, or to the retired folk in small towns who vote for Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen or Nigel Farage, is not all that obvious.