Conceptualising global competence: situating cosmopolitan student identities within internationalising South Korean Universities

ABSTRACT

Universities have increasingly pursued ‘world-class status’ and have prioritized internationalisation efforts. South Korean universities have accordingly invested billions of dollars in attracting foreign students and faculty, increasing English-medium instruction courses, and teaching curriculum related to global competence. This article applies a theory of cosmopolitanism to understand the relationship between global competence and student identity within internationalising South Korean universities. I argue that cosmopolitanism manifests in student identities at such universities in articulations that are contested and variegated. My findings suggest that cosmopolitanism demonstrates theoretical potential to conceptualise global competence in ways that overcome its critiques as Western-centric and elitist.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• cosmopolitanism
• internationalisation
• South Korea
• global competence
• student identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Hereafter, ‘Korea’ will specifically refer to South Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea, unless otherwise noted.

2 There are multiple definitions associated with this term. In this case, I use Pascarella et al.’s (2004) definition of ‘college students from families where neither parent had more than a high-school education’ (249).