Why non-academic staff mobility matters

Internationalisation in higher education has long been framed as a force for openness, cooperation, and the dismantling of borders. Yet within our own institutions, a quiet form of exclusion seems to persist: non-academic staff such as the administrators, secretaries, librarians, IT specialists, communications officers, and student service professionals who keep higher education institutions functioning are often overlooked in international mobility schemes. This is not a minor oversight. It raises important ethical questions  and addressing it, we argue, is a core dimension of responsible internationalisation.

This article presents the case of Ulysseus European University and its Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) on Multilingualism and Intercultural Competences designed specifically for non-academic staff. BIPs mark an important development in European higher education, offering accessible yet high-impact international learning experiences. BIPs are designed to democratise mobility while building the competencies students and staff members need to address global and societal challenges. The Ulysseus BIP offers a practical model of what responsible, inclusive staff mobility can look like and contributes to broadening internationalisation practices to more fully include non‑academic staff.

Who gets left behind in staff mobility?

Academic staff travel to conferences, research collaborations and teaching exchanges. Students benefit from blended and physical international opportunities. Non-academic staff largely watch from the sidelines, even if targeted staff weeks and job shadowing possibilities exist. However, non-academic staff play a crucial role in the everyday life and smooth operations in higher education institutions (HEIs), and it is important to include them in internationalisation activities.

This asymmetry raises important questions about professional development and institutional responsibility:

• If HEIs genuinely believe that intercultural competences improve professional practice, and there is ample evidence that they do, then limiting those development opportunities to academic staff undermines the very culture of openness they are meant to embody.
• An internationalisation strategy that builds intercultural competence only in certain staff categories risks being internally inconsistent.
• Responsible internationalisation must ask: who benefits from our programmes, and who is structurally excluded?

Key barriers HEIs should be aware of

Before designing inclusive programmes, institutions should recognise the conditions that make non-academic staff participation difficult in the first place:

• Non-academic staff are rarely named as a target group in mobility programme design.
• Operational and support roles often leave little room for the kind of professional development academic staff take for granted.
• Many non-academic staff have limited prior experience presenting in front of peers or working in a language other than their mother tongue, which can make unfamiliar formats feel genuinely risky.
• Psychological safety is not automatic: inclusion that ignores what it feels like to enter  an unfamiliar context for the first time remains inclusion in name only.

A case study in inclusion: the Ulysseus BIP

Ulysseus European University, established in 2020 and bringing together eight institutions across eight countries, launched its BIP on Multilingualism and Intercultural Competences in 2024. The programme was designed and first implemented by Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Finland, with a second edition hosted by MCI | The Entrepreneurial School® in Austria in spring 2025. A third edition is delivered at Université Côte d'Azur in France in summer 2026, and a fourth at the University of Münster in Germany in 2027.

The programme targets non-academic staff from a wide range of backgrounds: student services, library and information services, human resources, ICT, communications, and other areas of higher education administration. Over 50 participants joined the first two editions alone. The BIP format combines a structured virtual component, building working relationships before participants meet in person during the physical mobility week. Content is built around the Ulysseus +2 Language Programme and Language Policy, which promotes active multilingualism through a lingua-culture approach, recognising language, culture and social context as inseparable.

What the Ulysseus BIP did differently

Several design choices set this programme apart from standard staff mobility offerings:

• The programme was designed based on a systematic survey of non-academic staff across the alliance. Responses identified multilingualism, communication and intercultural competences as priority areas.
• Practical role-playing simulations placed intercultural competences in recognisable workplace situations rather than abstract frameworks.
• Participants paired up to teach each other their native languages using the tandem language learning method, covering Spanish, Italian, French, Slovak, German, Finnish and Montenegrin.
• The BIP uses a rotating host model, meaning each edition is anchored in a different country's culture and language; ensuring equal representation across the alliance rather than a single dominant institutional perspective.

Participant feedback from both editions was exceptionally positive. More significantly, participants consistently reported growth in their daily professional practice rather than abstract learning gains. One participant captured this concretely:

"The BIP helped me in my daily working life, for instance about dealing with international students with more awareness [...] and I create relationships with people and partners from other universities."

Another spoke of gaining "knowledge of social, linguistic and cultural matters and practical skills relevant to my current job."

The facilitators and lecturers involved in both editions noted that participants demonstrated exceptional commitment and genuine interest in intercultural competence development. This is precisely the kind of transformation that internationalisation strategies aim for but rarely reach at every institutional level.

None of this requires a large budget. It requires the willingness to ask who our internationalisation is actually designed for.

Ulysseus European University brings together the University of Seville (Spain, Coordinator), University of Genoa (Italy), Université Côte d'Azur (France), Technical University of Košice (Slovakia), MCI | The Entrepreneurial School® (Austria), Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences (Finland), University of Münster (Germany) and University of Montenegro (Montenegro).