Which students are “international” at an international branch campus?

Defining “international” when institutions, and students, cross borders

Abstract

How does one define an institutional student when both the student and the institution moves across borders? In a time when more students are traveling abroad to pursue an education, universities are also establishing campuses all over the world where students can obtain a degree without ever having traveled to the home country. Countries around the Arab Gulf, such Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, host dozens of international branch campuses (IBCs) that serve thousands of students from all over the world. These campuses tend to serve citizens of the host country, a large local expatriate population, students who travel from the IBCs home country, and students from other countries. This chapter presents a typology to explore how the definition of “international students” is problematized when it is the institutions, rather than the students (or sometimes both), that cross borders.