Contesting the Political Economy of Higher Education: Educating the Good Citizen

Abstract

In national and international sectors, citizenship is constantly contested, negotiated, and reinvented across geographical boundaries. Higher education institutions around the world have focused on embedding graduate outcomes that characterize the ideal global citizen across the curriculum. International mobility programs promote international staff and student exchanges as a strategy to develop global citizenship. This paper presents a critical review of the notion of global citizenship through the narrative of a doctoral graduate who made his journey as a good citizen within an international mobility context. A research network-based framework is proposed for the higher education sector to assess the impact of regional advantage, labor, and international mobility programs. The authors contest the political economy of higher education for developing global citizenship as a corporate endeavor and submit that the international higher education vision should refocus on good citizenship instead as a moral imperative.