Internationalisation has long passed from being simply a badge of honour. It’s now a core requirement for any higher education institution wanting to remain relevant today.
But it cannot rely solely on outward-facing mobility schemes or global recruitment strategies. They often only benefit a minority of students and are increasingly constrained by cost, capacity and geopolitics.
At my university’s business school, we’ve instead pursued an “internationalisation at home” approach, integrating global perspectives into the curricula, assessments and academic practice. Instead of treating international exposure as an optional extra, it’s a normal part of the student experience.
From institutional ambition to classroom practice
Effective internationalisation starts with having a clarity of purpose. This means aligning programmes to global business realities, recognising the diversity of regulatory and cultural environments in which firms operate, and then designing learning experiences that require students to engage with this complexity.
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Instead of beginning with partnerships or exchange numbers, the starting point for us was curriculum design. Core modules in finance, accounting and strategy were reviewed to identify where teaching relied too heavily on single-country assumptions or narrowly defined “best practice” models.
These were then revised to incorporate comparative international material, without expanding syllabi beyond what was manageable for staff or students.
In practical terms, this involved replacing isolated local case studies with paired or comparative cases, asking students to analyse the same business decision across different markets or working with international datasets that highlight institutional variation.
For example, our corporate finance programme increasingly requires students to consider how capital-structure choices differ between emerging and developed economies, rather than treating one model as universally optimal.
Embed internationalisation in academic work
A second pillar of our approach has been the deliberate use of faculty activity as a driver of internationalisation. Instead of treating teaching, research and international engagement as separate domains, we’ve aimed to link them more closely together.
As educators, we’re encouraged to draw directly on our international research collaborations when designing modules. This has led to co-taught virtual sessions with overseas colleagues, joint student assignments using shared research material and the integration of live international research questions into classroom discussion. These activities don’t demand visiting professors or large travel budgets, but instead make better use of existing academic networks.
Most importantly, this work is recognised institutionally. Internationalised teaching and collaborative curriculum development are reflected in workload allocation and promotion criteria, helping to ensure that global engagement is not treated as informal or discretionary labour.
Partnerships that support teaching and research
International partnerships play a role in this model, but their value is judged less by mobility numbers and more by their academic contribution. We prioritise partnerships that support faculty development, joint research and shared teaching resources, rather than agreements that exist primarily for reputational reasons.
Effective partnerships have typically included provisions for faculty training, access to international case materials, co-supervision of student research projects and pathways from collaborative teaching into joint publications. This helps ensure that even relatively small-scale partnerships result in visible classroom benefits and research output.
Assess what internationalisation delivers
One of the most significant shifts has taken place in assessment. If students are not required to demonstrate how global perspectives shape their thinking, we risk internationalisation remaining superficial – and failing to equip students with the skills they need.
Assessments increasingly ask students to justify decisions across institutional contexts, reflect on the assumptions underlying financial or managerial models, and engage explicitly with cultural or regulatory variation.
This approach is often implemented by adapting assignments, rather than introducing entirely new forms of assessment, which makes it both scalable and sustainable. In practice, instructors retain the same deliverable and grading structure, but add a short, explicit requirement for students to re-test their analysis under a different institutional, regulatory or cultural context and clearly explain what changes and why.
As part of this exercise, students must also incorporate country risk, including political and regulatory uncertainty, currency risk, inflation volatility, market liquidity and the quality of legal enforcement. This is critical because many business and financial models are developed around assumptions that are coherent with developed markets (stable institutions, deep capital markets, reliable data and predictable regulation). When applied in emerging or developing markets, these assumptions can weaken or fall apart, leading to conclusions that are incomplete or even misleading.
Educators should strengthen students’ readiness for international contexts by requiring them to adapt their recommendations and underlying assumptions to each country's specifics, rather than treating global settings as interchangeable.
Takeaways
The broader lesson from our experience is that internationalisation is most effective when pursued as a set of everyday academic practices rather than a separate strategic initiative.
By focusing on curriculum design, faculty engagement and assessment, business schools can internationalise at scale using resources they already possess.
The key question is not how many students can be sent abroad, but how global perspectives are embedded in what all students are taught, how they are taught and how learning is evaluated.
In an increasingly multipolar global economy, business schools in emerging regions are not simply participating in internationalisation; they are helping to redefine it.
When internationalisation is treated as a core academic responsibility rather than an external badge, it becomes both more inclusive and more intellectually meaningful.
Imad Jabbouri is associate professor of finance and accounting at the School of Business Administration at Al Akhawayn University.
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