Elites at the planning table

Abstract

The problem this case study addressed was that theories for planning international academic exchange programs do not make central the role of stakeholders, ignoring important social, political, and ethical dimensions of practice. The purpose was to show how the University of Georgia University of Veracruz social work academic exchange came into existence through a social process of stakeholders negotiating interests within relationships of power. The Study was rooted in a theoretical perspective developed by Cervero and Wilson (1994a, 1994b, 1998, 2006). This perspective holds that program planning is a social activity whereby people construct educational programs by negotiating personal, social, and organizational interests in contexts marked by socially-structured power relations (Cervero & Wilson, 1998). The two research questions for the case study were:1. What are the interests of the major stakeholders and stakeholder groups for the academic exchange program?2. How have negotiations among and between stakeholders affected the features of the academic exchange program?Stakeholders were divided into six groups including administrators, faculty, and students from both institutions. The study used observations and interviews to determine the exchange history, stakeholder actions and interests, and whether the exchange met stakeholder interests. Stakeholders held personal, organizational, and societal interests. There was little within but significant across group interest conflict due to contextual asymmetries between stakeholder groups, institutions, and societies. The exchange program came into existence through alternating meta-negotiations about stakeholder power relationships and substantive negotiations about course features. Meta-negotiations and substantive negotiations shaped one another and the course. This study had four major conclusions: 1) internationalization of higher education is an agent and reactor to globalization; 2) stakeholders' negotiation of power and interests at planning tables frame and shape the development of international academic exchange programs; 3) values and rationales underpin strategies, programs, and policies driving international academic exchange; and, 4) power relations among and between elite stakeholder and researcher pose methodological challenges.