Bridging universities and the world: a cross-national analysis of countries’ participation in the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme, 1992–2020

ABSTRACT

The UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme is a global initiative for higher education institutions around the world. Participants are expected to uphold the values of UNESCO and contribute to the development of a broader society, often beyond national boundaries. Despite the lack of financial incentives, more than 1,300 higher education institutions from 142 countries have been involved since the programme launched in 1992. Drawing on theories concerning both national and global environments, I employ event count analysis to investigate what drives the successful diffusion of the programme and what factors influence countries’ differing levels of participation. The results reveal that participation density, countries’ linkages to world society, existence of the ministry of higher education, and the occurrence of relevant world conferences are positively associated with participation. Developing countries took part more actively in the earlier era during which UNESCO provided seed money to launch programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• UNESCO
• UNITWIN
• global initiative
• internationalisation
• higher education
• cross-national analysis

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Francisco O. Ramirez and Christine Min Wotipka for their helpful comments on several drafts, as well as Patricia Bromley and members of the Stanford Comparative Sociology Workshop for their thoughtful feedback. The UNESCO Section of Higher Education deserves thanks for sharing the data that made this study possible. I would also like to thank David John Frank for kindly sharing the Ministry of Higher Education data. Finally, I extend my thanks to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

There are no sources of funding to report for this research.