The impact of the internationalisation of higher education on academic staff development - the case of Slovenian public universities

The internationalisation of higher education has been emphasised in recent decades. As has been frequently stressed, internationalisation has had a value per se since the foundation of medieval universities, yet it can also have wider impacts for the management of higher education institutions and for academic staff especially in the period of increasing globalisation. In this article, we analyse the impact of the internationalisation of higher education on academic staff development in Slovenian public universities. The research carried out on a sample of 406 academic staff from all three Slovenian public universities reveals that academic staff value their involvement in international activities positively and that internationalisation significantly contributes to their professional development as measured in terms of career promotion. Moreover, this could be interpreted as a positive impact of the internationalisation of higher education on the quality of higher education institutions.