The internationalization of higher education assumes a leading role in the world scenario after the 1990s. This tendency is fortified with the classification of higher education as service, subject to the General Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the prevailing notion of transnationalization over sovereignty of the nation-state. This paper intends to identify the state of knowledge about university internationalization, concepts and practices (DALE, 2000), in this century, from the analysis of data bases of European and North-American education periodicals. The methodology is guided by the principles of content analysis. The growth of scholarly writings on the topic has been identified, along with a tendency of altering the thematic focus: from conceptual to practical. The internationalization of higher education in the light of the expansion of the system and complexity urges for studies and public policies that reduce the market approach and contribute to the social-academic quality.
Internationalization of Higher Education; state of art; higher education; transnationalization