Exploring the peculiar relationship between higher education quality and internationalization: a discourse analytical and spatial reading of four European university strategies

Internationalization is often regarded as a tool for enhancing the quality of education and research, but the question is how are they related? This paper aims to address this by analysing the way quality and internationalization are represented in strategy documents of four universities, looking into how quality and internationalization are discussed together, what kinds of premises are present about their relationship, and how quality relates to universities’ geographical positioning. We do so by analysing strategies in four European universities; two ‘capital’ universities and two ‘town’ universities. First, we analyse what quality means in relation to internationalization within the strategies and show that the meaning is often empty; then, we unfold the implicit meanings of this ‘self-evident quality’. With a spatial perspective we analyse how the universities position themselves in the world and how this is intertwined with notions of quality. The discussion compares and contrasts the four strategies and shows more similarities between universities of town or capital origin rather than universities with the same nationality.