Legitimacy, stratification, and internationalization in global higher education: the case of the International Associati
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Legitimacy, stratification, and internationalization in global higher education: the case of the International Association of Universities Mike Zapp 1 & Jens Jungblut 2,3
& Francisco O. Ramirez
4
Received: 8 April 2020 / Accepted: 5 October 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
The International Association of Universities (IAU) is the only inclusive global university association, its membership barriers are low, yet few universities are members despite considerable benefits. What determines membership in this long-standing international university alliance? Reviewing recent trends toward a more networked, stratified and internationalized global higher education field, we argue that universities with a greater need for legitimation and those ‘born’ into a global era are more likely to become members of an inclusive international network like the IAU. Thus, we expect lower status and younger universities to be more likely to join. We apply regression models to test hypotheses implied by these arguments. Our findings are consistent with these hypotheses, even after controlling for other factors. We discuss these findings using neo-institutional arguments about legitimacy and imprinted logics and suggest potential analytical avenues for further research. Keywords Meta-organization . University alliance . International Association of Universities . Legitimation . Imprinting . Internationalization Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11233-02009062-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Jens Jungblut [email protected] Mike Zapp [email protected] Francisco O. Ramirez [email protected]
1
Department of Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
2
Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
3
SCANCOR / Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
4
Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Tertiary Education and Management
Introduction Over the past two decades, higher education has become a highly interconnected and nested global organizational field, in which the UNESCO-affiliated International Association of Universities (IAU) occupies a prominent position as one of the first and the only genuinely global and inclusive meta-organizations, i.e. organization that has other organizations as members (Berkowitz and Bor 2017). Despite its broad range of missions and membership benefits, membership in the IAU is strikingly low, with currently only 3.2%, or N = 551, of the global higher education field (~16,978) being a full (institutional) member of the IAU. This raises the question, what determines universities’ decision to join such a meta-organization in global higher education? To explain membership in the IAU, we are guided by two different but overlapping theoretical traditions in organizational analysis. From a neo-institutional perspective, organizations seek legitimacy, which often entails enacting an app
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