Internationalization of Higher Education in Laos: Perspectives of university staff on rationales, challenges, and strategies for the post-COVID-19

While internationalization has been a strategic driver in transforming higher education in universities across the world, little research has investigated how universities in less-developed countries have implemented the internationalization process to benefit their human and institutional capacity. This article explored the perspectives of university staff on rationales, challenges, and strategies for internationalization through the analysis of survey data collected from 82 university staff (i.e., presidents, deans, directors, academics, and staff) working at four public universities in Laos. The findings showed that resource assurance and academic rationales were the main drivers for internationalization in Lao universities toward strengthening institutional and human capacity and improving the quality of educational provisions. Meanwhile, the universities had attempted to overcome a shortage of capable human resources, financial constraints, and administrative mechanisms to expand internationalization practices. This study also found that universities focused on enhancing information and communication technology (ICT) and foreign language skills of faculty members, expanding partnerships with quality cooperation, and promoting digitalization in the teaching function of the institution as an internationalization strategy for post-COVID-19. These results could bring voices from an underrepresented country into the discourse on the internationalization of higher education and have implications for other contexts with similar conditions.