In the 21^st century, the human society has entered the era of globalization. During the past 20 years, internationalization of higher education has undergone tremendous changes, formed the three stages of “initiation-dependence-independence". With the continuous progress of internationalization of higher education (HE) in the world, it is increasingly urgent to develop effective accreditation criteria for internationalization of higher education.

APQN has been exploring the theory and practice of the Asia-Pacific Quality Label (APQL) for Internationalization since 2013. Based on the process of on-site APQL review for Internationalization conducted by the APQL panel at Symbiotic International (deemed University) in India in April 2019, this paper first discusses the overview of accreditation criteria of HE internationalization, then analyses the APQL review aims, criteria, steps and methods, finally, four characteristics of APQL are summarized: 1) to promote the process of HE internationalization in the Asia-Pacific Region; 2) to adopt the method of combining qualitative and quantitative review; 3）to highlight the review concept of “emphasizing both process and output review”; 4） to emphasize the internationalization development characteristics of “emphasizing both internationalization and local internationalization”.

Author Profile(s)

Professor Dr. Jianxin Zhang is the 5^th and 6^th President（2016-2019; 2019-2022） of the Asia-Pacific Quality Network (APQN), the largest and most influential non-profit/non-government organization in quality assurance of higher education in the Asia-Pacific Region. She is the Chief Expert of Yunnan Higher Education Evaluation Center (YHEEC), Tenured Professor of Yunnan University and Advisor of Council for CHEA/CIQG in USA (2012-2017).

She obtained her PhD degree at Peking University in China, her Master degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Switzerland. She was the visiting scholar in Asia-Pacific Program of Educational Innovation for Development (APEID) of UNESCO in 2008.

She has been actively involved in the practices and researches of quality assurance. She co-organized 2015 APQN Academic Conference (AAC) in China. She organized over 20 on-site evaluations to higher education institutions (HEIs), designed the framework of program evaluation, conducted dozens of workshops on QA in China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other countries/territories. She reviewed Fiji Higher Education Commission, Russian Register and IAAHEH/LAM-PTKes in Indonesian for on-site review of Asia-Pacific Quality Register (APQR). She is one of the review panelists in CHEA/CIQG Quality Platform Review on the Students Learning Outcomes (SLOs). She is the site review leader of APQN Quality Label (APQL) on Accreditation of Internationalization to Symbiosis International (Deemed University) in India. She observed in AUN Actual Quality Assessment at Program Level, twice presented in Asia-Pacific Sub-regional Preparatory Conference for World Conference on Higher Education and participated in International Forum for Education 2020 organized by East-West Center in USA. She has visited over 60 countries /territories on various academic assignments and QA matters.

She has been teaching for over 30 years in comparative education, quality assurance and educational methods and other 20 courses, and supervised over 50 postgraduates in Yunnan University. She presided and engaged in over 60 research projects both domestically and abroad, e.g. “APQN Sustainable Development” “INQAAHE-APQN Survey of Internal and External Quality Assurance Landscape” ... She has published 6 monographs, 4 translated books, 20 edited books and over 200 papers. Among them, 10 got the government’s academic awards in China.