Drawing upon the existing discourse and current debate on internationalisation, the article explores and discusses common conceptions and misconceptions of internationalisation in higher education. The argument put forward is that policy-makers and educators have had a tendency to stress the formal aspects of international co- operation, often at the expense of content-related matters in internationalisation. Consequently, there is a need for emphasising the ideological and pedagogic underpinnings of internationalisation, curriculum considerations, the potential of the multicultural class-room, the academic benefits and challenges of student and staff exchange, etc. Also, internationalisation and questions of ethnic pluralism should be discussed in an integrated fashion. By combining theoretical reasoning with examples and personal experiences, strategies for working with international education are presented. The objective of the discussion is to arrive at an exhaustive and fruitful conceptualisation of the term internationalisation in higher education.