Journal of Danubian Studies and Research, Vol 7, No 2 (2017)

Abstract

This paper argues on the importance of intercultural competence development of theacademic and other staff, providing services to international students as part of the internalizationpolicy of higher education. For this purpose two educational institutions are surveyed: RuseUniversity (RU), Bulgaria and Hubei University of Technology (HBUT), China. Recently, bothuniversities have increased the number of their study abroad programs for local students, universityprograms for international students and exchange mobility transfers as part of their policies forinternationalization. These institutions of higher education have also cooperated under the Erasmus+program, which provided the authors with the possibility to elaborate a survey on the topic. Thus totalof 29 international student educators participated in the study, which involved survey questionnairesin English, based on the Integrated Process Model of Intercultural Competence. The research resultsreveal that intercultural competence development is not a policy built-in practice or an organizedprocess in these universities, which brings every-day challenges for the educators. Also, the findingsconfirm Hofstede‘s conclusion on organizational culture by showing that in spite of the differencesbetween Bulgarian and Chinese national cultures, these two universities‘ policies, values andpractices are very similar.