"Universities must reexamine their curricula, scrutinize 'more of the same' thinking, and tune in to the new 'international order' of things by reconceptualizing their roles and reassigning priorities."
Josef A. Mestenhauser (1998), "Portraits of an International Curriculum" (p. 13)
The collection of essays edited by Josef A. Mestenhauser and Brenda J. Ellingboe (1998), Reforming the Higher Education Curriculum: Internationalizing the Campus, presented a comprehensive portrait of reconsidering the international dimensions of a campus's curricula. The essays grew out of a year-long seminar made up of faculty and students at the University of Minnesota, and aimed, according to the editors, to challenge various assumptions about international education. One notable assumption is "that knowledge is universal and 'portable' from anywhere to anywhere" (p. xviii).
Such a reexamination of assumptions, especially in the economic environment of the early 21st century, makes administrators and others nervous about the costs. When it comes to considering the cost and benefits of international education, Mestenhauser (1998) argued,
Much like Horner and Trimbur's (2002) and Donahue's (2009) arguments for teachers and administrators to develop an international perspective, Mestenhauser sought to integrate an international perspective into mainstream systems of U.S. higher education. His view was strongly motivated by a commitment to enacting changes in the activities faculty and students engage in on university campuses, and a belief that current infrastructures for higher education have not been adequate to the tasks. Teachers and administrators working in transnational writing programs need to remain vigilant, identifying the strengths and limitations of both existing and newly emerging infrastructures.
Robust conversations about the corporatization of the university—in print, at professional conferences, in the hallways of the university—reveal concerns about the trumping of educational or pedagogical concerns by economic and business concerns. The internationalization of higher education certainly adds more fuel for those concerned about how business models have overshadowed or inhibited pedagogical models that emphasize cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and interdisciplinary education. Along with the potential benefits there are significant economic risks to developing international programs. But there are also educational risks when a business model presumes that the educational activities that have been successful in one location—with its specific geographical, political, economic, linguistic, and cultural milieu—can be imported into another location without significant thought and consideration.
Here, as in my edited collection, Transnational Writing Program Administration (2015), I use the term "transnational" to describe the growing phenomenon that Grant McBurnie and Christopher Ziguras address in their book Transnational Education: Issues and trends in offshore higher education as "any education delivered by an institution based in one country to students located in another" (p. 1). But unlike "global" or "international," I use the term "transnational" because it also invokes a more critical, analytical orientation like that described by Rebeca Dingo in her book, Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, transnational feminism, and public policy. Dingo (2012) argued:
The term transnational, while defined in a number of ways, generally refers to how globalization has influenced the movement of people and the production of texts, culture, and knowledge across borders so that the strict distinctions among nations and national practices can become blurred. In the last ten years, disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences have recognized that increasing globalization and enduring neoliberal economics have changed our understandings of citizenship, place, and texts. Drawing heavily from the fields of political science, sociology, geography, and women's studies, the emergent interdisciplinary field of transnational studies has sought to uncover, analyze, and conceptualize similarities, differences and interactions among trans-societal and trans-organizational realities and dynamics across time and space (Levitt and Khagram, p. 10–11). (p. 8–9)
By considering the infrastructure of transnational writing programs, my aim is to continue a critical conversation about the opportunities and implications for the learning, teaching and administration of writing across borders.
The bitter battle in the state of Wisconsin over the right of public employees to unionize and bargain collectively is now shifted to the courts and yet, the massive efforts to recall elected officials failed. The argument made by the Republican Governor, based upon a kind of market logic, is that after years of recession and continued economic downturns, the salaries and benefits of public employees, which were the result of collective bargaining, were too costly for the state to continue paying. Still, while the public employee unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits, the governor insisting on his legislation in the Republican controlled legislature, despite the efforts of the minority Democrats to thwart the passage of the law, as well as widespread public support. An example of market logic gone awry: even when the unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits to help close the budget deficit, the governor signed the law to restrict collective bargaining.