Since the inception of higher education, there has been a range of international, national, institutional and individual academic responses to the shifting culture of universities over time and in different contexts.  This research explores a range of factors are explored to identify the values and ideologies that influence the internationalisation of higher education in a changing world. 

The higher education context is important, as Pring reminds us, it is the exploration in learning, teaching and research that has no end in the search for ‘what it is to be human’ (2005:25).   From this standpoint, critical humanism is both a perspective, a view of the world, and a practice, in that it informs what we do, how we view people and how we treat people (Said 2004:2; Held 2005), both on a personal and professional basis.   Humanism therefore becomes a tool for my critical reflexivity and analysis (Beck and Cronin 2006: 2; Appiah 2006: xiii; Held 2005: 25).  My methodological stance is to use critical humanism as a means of questioning, and challenging some of the ideas that surround the dynamics of internationalisation.  

The dominant argument found in academic literature is that internationalisation as a phenomenon is driven by the globalisation agenda set by the global West.   As a result the academic rationale for universities is under threat by overriding economic agenda.   At institutional however level a range of contested and contradictory perspectives and values are involved in promoting different economic and academic interests and priorities for universities in the twenty-first century, in the process of continual change. My empirical research however disputes this duality

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