ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the strategic role of international partnerships in higher education in the context of globalisation and internationalisation. It begins with a conceptual discussion of seven key constructs that relate to the notion of partnerships. The chapter describes four-metaphor framework to illuminate the role of partnerships. Sieves is for sorting and stratifying society; incubators for the development of competent human capital and social actors; temples for the legitimating of official knowledge and hubs for connecting up knowledge and those who generate it in pursuit of new forms of knowledge. The chapter discusses the term global higher education partnerships to denote formal or informal working arrangements between universities, especially those in the rich global North and those in the poorer global South. Epistemic concerns are closely linked to issues of equity and inequity. The term, however, allows us to focus on the assumptions behind knowledge distribution within and across partnership institutions.
