Student exchange programs: their contribution to globalisation from below. Fiona Clyne and Roger Woock, Monash Centre for Research in International Education, Monash University, Australia. Available from < http://web.archive.org/web/20041230195405/http://www.werple.net.au/~andy/blackwood/fiona3.htm >. access on 23 January 2017.


The research project, of which this paper represents one report, is the result of both thinking about and practising a set of operations that results in student exchange: the movement of students (without additional fees) from one country and university to another for a prescribed period (one or two semesters) with the understanding that reciprocal movement will occur.

In part this paper is an attempt to theorise student exchange. We believe it is important to do this for three reasons:

1. Theory helps to explain student exchange better and better explanation should lead to better programs;

2. Theory helps to identify student exchange as a positive aspect of the overall process of globalisation; and

3. Our anecdotal evidence suggest that something occurs during and after a student exchange which needs to be explained.

We take our theoretical orientation from the chapter "Globalisation, the State and Educational Policy Making" in Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard and Henry’s Educational Policy and the Politics of Change (1997) and the work of Richard Falk, most particularly his chapter titled "The Making of Global Citizenship" in Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order (Brecher, et al 1993).

We wish to locate student exchange as a university activity which belongs to and participates in cultural globalisation. We wish to distinguish it from certain other international activities of universities particularly the export of education ie full fee paying international students pursuing an entire diploma or degree course. These programs are best seen as activities of a corporate university engaged in the commodity of education. Different languages are used to talk about exchange and full fee. Reciprocity, cooperation, global understanding are terms associated with exchange whereas market share, the dollar value of qualifications and prestige of awards are stressed in full fee.

The theoretical starting point for our analysis is Richard Falk’s distinction between globalisation-from-above and globalisation-from-below. Globalisation-from-above, according to Falk, reflects "the collaboration between leading states and the main agents of capital formation". It may be either a "geo-political project of the U.S. government" or a "technological and marketing project of large scale capitalism" (Brecher, 1993:39).

Globalisation-from-below, on the other hand, "consists of an array of transnational social forces animated by environmental concerns, human rights, hostility to patriarchy, and a vision of human community based on the unity of diverse cultures ... seeking an end to poverty, oppression, humiliation and collective violence". It expresses the spirit of "democracy without frontiers" (Brecher, 1993:39-40).


Keywords: mathematics commons in consulting, educating change in evidence, practice in commons, environmental concerns, global citizenship, policy making, diverse cultures, futures contracts, cryptocurrency, globalisation, reciprocity, stress


Brazil: higher education in Brazil

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