Internationalization, the process of adding an international or intercultural dimension to various aspects of higher education, has become a growing imperative for higher education institutions (HEIs) within the United States and worldwide. Once the domain of research-intensive universities and private liberal arts colleges, the internationalization imperative now expands to every type of HEI, including community colleges and other broad-access institutions (Green, 2007; Raby & Valeau, 2016; Yemini et al., 2015). Community colleges, a unique sector of higher education that serves close to 50% of all undergraduate students in the United States, face increasing pressure to internationalize from professional organizations and from scholars of higher education (Harder, 2010; Opp & Gosetti, 2014; Raby, 2007). However, internationalization in the community college sector continues to lag behind other sectors of higher education.Several possible reasons exist for the lag in internationalization, including a persistent belief that global is the opposite of local, and thus in direct contrast to the primary mission of the community college to serve the local community (Raby & Valeau, 2016). Advocacy efforts to increase internationalization of community colleges continue to rely on rationales that were developed in the context of research universities (Raby & Valeau, 2016). Thus, the purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the rationales guiding current, successful, global education initiatives at community colleges and the role of local context in the development of those rationales.I conducted a multi-site case study of two different community colleges with active, campus-based global education programs. I interviewed 24 faculty and staff members and analyzed documents related to global education initiatives on each campus. Key findings from the study indicate that rationales for global education in community colleges fall into three main categories: student-driven, institution-driven, and community-driven. Most notably, participants in this study strongly believed that global is not the opposite of local and that global education is critical to serving local communities in today’s globalized environment. Based on these findings, I offer a service-oriented framework for understanding rationales for global education in community colleges. I also offer a model that depicts the interaction of micro- and macro-rationales for global education. This model illustrates the ways that local context influences the development of rationales. Implications for practice, policy, theory, and future research are discussed with an emphasis on understanding and using local-level rationales to improve advocacy for increasing global education programming on community college campuses.
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