Internationalization of Higher Education as an indicator of Sinaes: what quality are we talking about?

Abstract

The process of internationalization has gained centrality in the debates on the quality of higher education institutions, becoming an indispensable element for scientific and cultural growth among countries in the various regions of the world. As an integrator of the international, intercultural and global dimensions of activities – teaching, research and extension – this process is becoming more and more a way of inducing quality, which is why, instead of happening spontaneously, Needs to be stimulated by institutional policies. Based on these premises, the objective of this article is to investigate the internationalization strategies adopted by a group of five federal universities, as pointed out in the quality indicators of the National System for the Evaluation of Higher Education (Sinaes), instituted by Law No. 10.861/2014, In Sinaes, the internationalization indicator is part of the IES Institutional Development evaluation axis, aiming at verifying the coherence between its Institutional Development Plan and the institutional policies, in the case of this work, the five selected universities and their interface with Sinaes policy. The proposed reflection considers, on the one hand, the complexity involved in the concept of internationalization associated with higher education and the strategies adopted by the IES and, on the other, that internationalization demands the formulation and evaluation of tuned goals, among others, with the requirements the different forms of their participation in the process.