This book explores how the recruitment and retention of Asian international students in Canadian universities intersects with other institutional priorities. Responding to the growing need for new insights and perspectives on the institutional mechanisms adopted by Canadian universities to support Asian international students in their academic and social integration to university life, it crucially examines the challenges at the intersection of two institutional priorities: internationalization and anti-racism. This is especially important for the Asian international student group, who are known to experience invisible forms of discrimination and differential treatment in Canadian post-secondary education institutions. The authors present new conceptualisations and theoretical perspectives on topics including international students’ experiences and understandings of race and racism, comparisons with domestic students and/or non-Asian students, institutional discourse and narratives on Asian international students, comparison with other university priorities, cross-national comparisons, best practices, and recent developments linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. Foregrounding the institutional strategies of Canadian universities, as opposed to student experience exclusively, this direct examination of institutional responses and initiatives draws out similarities and differences across the country, compares them within the broader array of university priorities, and ultimately offers the opportunity for Canadian universities to learn from each other in improving the integration of Asian international students and others to their student body. It will appeal to teacher-scholars, researchers and educators with interested in higher education, international education and race and ethnic studies.

Presenting an analysis of higher education in eight countries in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, Degrees of Dignity works to dismantle narratives of crisis and assert approaches to institutional reform. Drawing on policy documents, media narratives, interviews, and personal experiences, Elizabeth Buckner explores how apolitical external reform models become contested and modified by local actors in ways that are simultaneously complicated, surprising, and even inspiring. Degrees of Dignity documents how the global discourses of neoliberalism have legitimized specific policy models for higher education reform in the Arab world, including quality assurance, privatization, and internationalization. Through a multi-level and comparative analysis, this book examines how policy models are implemented, with often complex results, in countries throughout the region. Ultimately, Degrees of Dignity calls on the field of higher education development to rethink current approaches to higher education reform: rather than viewing the Arab world as a site for intervention, it argues that the Arab world can act as a source for insight on resilient higher education systems.