Paper abstract:

With the rise of globalization, internationalization has become a key trend in higher education systems worldwide. While there are various rationales as to why institutions and national governments integrate internationalization into higher education and how they do it, little is known as to how internationalization can be enforced at a national level. After the change of leadership in 2016 Uzbekistan has opened its higher education (HE) system for broader internationalization and welcomed international initiatives such as the opening of foreign university branch campuses and joint programs. While this change in the HE policy has brought some liberalization to the sector, the current nature of internationalization does not seem to reflect the voices of university academics. Nor does it seem to have a clear HE development intent. Using the case of post-Soviet Uzbekistan, this paper argues that HE internationalization can be a cosmetic measure enforced by the government in which universities lack independent internationalization strategies. The argument is supported by the content analysis of interviews held with 22 university lecturers during the fieldwork in Tashkent in 2020. The research findings contribute to the expansion of commonly known conceptualizations on the manifestations of internationalization in the university sectors.