Substantive or symbolic? The international strategies of Czech universities

There is a voluminous literature on the internationalisation of higher education. However, there is much less written about the international strategies of universities themselves. The countries of Central Europe are a particularly important omission because of their distinctive history and culture and experience of post-socialist transition and subsequent accession to the European Union. We explore Czech universities’ international strategies, in the context of institutional pressures, particularly from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, using organisational legitimacy theory. Data were collected from 11 public universities in the Czech Republic using the universities’ mission and vision statements, their strategic plans and international strategies, and 40 semi-structured in-depth interviews. We find that public universities in the Czech Republic use symbolic international strategies, as well as substantive ones; sometimes concurrently. The international strategies are driven by concerns about legitimacy as well as competitiveness. The deployment of symbolic international strategies by Czech universities is a pragmatic response to institutional pressures, particularly from the Ministry, which provides most of their funding. Thus, Czech universities behave in a way that bolsters their survival and secures funding for their development, as suggested by the influence strand of the theory of pragmatic organisational legitimacy.