In the last half century higher education has had to respond to a rapidly accentuated process of globalisation. Consequently, universities worldwide are more concerned with internationalisation than before. Stier identifies three intrinsic internationalisation ideologies (idealism,instrumentalism and educationalism) in higher education. Drawing from these ideologies and using discourse analysis, written documentation on internationalisation from 31 universities in 12 countries has been analysed to explore the self-presentations that universities project of themselves in discursive space. Focal questions were: (1) what types of rhetorical devices are used in university's self-presentations and (2) what are the ideological consequences of this use? Five idealtypical selfpresentations were discussed. One conclusion drawn is that universities must harmonize politically controversial dichotomies, which produces consensus narratives. Yet there are potential tensions between these dichotomies. On the language level these tensions are resolved by harmonising different ideals.