Similar Goals and Dueling Agendas: Perceptions of Campus Internationalization and Equity Policy

As the implementation of comprehensive internationalization becomes more commonplace at US universities, there are growing concerns about how policies and mandates driving internationalization impact existing campus programs. While comprehensive internationalization policy creates programs that provide educational opportunities to students, these programs on campus are likely to increase inequity. Based on a case study of a university, internationalization and equity policies were critically examined through document analysis and structured interviews. Using an organizational theory lens, this study assessed the level of congruency between the university’s stated goals of equity and internationalization (espoused theories), with the day-to-day practices of the international and diversity offices (theories-inpractice). The results found that the reproduction of inequity was enacted due to incongruencies between espoused theories of higher education policy and their actual implementation in practice. These findings support the need for administrators to attend to designing organizational structures that facilitate task interdependence and collaboration between campus units, as well as the need to include equity metrics into key performance indicators