Freeing schools to take international pupils

The idea that David Cameron is contemplating allowing state secondaries to recruit international students - albeit free schools and academies rather than state schools - seems to have caused surprising amounts of consternation. Presumably from her comments, many like Fiona Millar are unaware that international students are already studying at secondary level in the state sector - in FE sixth form colleges.

More to the point might be a question mark about the attractiveness of the proposition. Given the challenges the FE sector has already faced since the introduction of Tier 4 it's hard to imagine many state secondaries will be queuing up to get into international recruitment. The FE sector has found it a challenge competing with private sector alternatives such as embedded colleges.  How much more so will new entrant secondaries find existing independent schools way ahead of them in the market? And although the Tier 4 child route is less politically sensitive than Tier 4 (General), it does require a significant investment in compliance systems and expertise in immigration advice for pupils. Moreover, unlike the independent school sector where most big international recruiters already have boarding facilities, the academies and free schools Cameron proposes could take on international pupils are overwhelmingly day schools. Developing residential accommodation or recruiting host families and extending the school's pastoral care systems will represent an additional challenge. The likelihood of significant new recruitment in this sector therefore has to be questioned.

While discussion of an Education Industry Export Strategy - clunkily named, as all would agree - may have surprised outsiders, the key players in international education have been party to these discussions. It is very welcome to see David Cameron's office supporting a boost for an international education strategy, but until he reigns in the excesses of the anti-immigration lobby - from bonds to NHS charges to landlords being asked to check immigration status - initiatives like international pupils in free schools and academies are just futile tinkering at the margins.

The sledgehammer approach to immigration and social issues

Why do governments struggle to keep immigration issues in proportion?

In the aftermath of the Boston bombing, during which one Chinese student was killed and at least one other injured, there was a brief focus on how this might affect international students' perceptions of their safety in the US, a recognition that international students were victims of this awful crime.  But all too soon political representatives were calling for further restrictions on international student visa holders.  Although foreign nationals, neither of the perpetrators was in the US on a student visa.  But the fact a fellow-student on a lapsed student visa may have attempted to dispose of evidence relating to the accused has led to an immediate tightening of the system, with returning international students facing automatic checks of their visa status (and longer queues at airports).  Admittedly, it's hard to know where to start with home-grown terrorists, but sweeping up all half a million of the US's international students into the category "potential terrorist" is a bizarre over-reaction.

Meanwhile in the UK, similar attempts to appear tougher on immigrants, including international students, are evident in the measures announced in the Queen's speech to require private landlords to check tenants' immigration status, and to require migrants to "make a contribution" to the NHS.  The latter flies in the face of economic evidence to the contrary as frequently cited by Jonathan Portes, or for example the recent study of costs and benefits of international students in Sheffield - not to mention the contribution immigrant staff to keeping the NHS functioning...

As for the idea of asking landlords to check tenants' immigration status, it is hard to see how this could be made workable.  While this measure is not aimed at international students, many do use private sector accommodation at some point during their stay.  While large-scale private providers of student housing will no doubt find ways of coping with this additional layer of bureaucracy, smaller landlords will struggle - compare the situation with work visas after study, were most SMEs (and even large ones) fail to engage a visa system they find complex and confusing.  While many cities are seeing a contraction in the student housing market, and landlords may be keen to let, adding an additional bureaucratic hurdle will neither help them, nor international students (and quite possibly any other student who appears to a landlord to have a foreign name or face).  International students with families may be particularly vulnerable given the shortage of institution-managed family accommodation

If governments fail to keep these issues in proportion, and come up with crowd-pleasing gesture politics, is this matched by similar knee-jerk reactions among the public?  We know that public perceptions of immigration are much more nuanced (as the Migration Observatory has shown).  Let's hope the government's proposals get something of a reality check before they reach the statute book.

International policies on international students working after study

International students in the UK who want to stay on and work have seen a minor improvement in their prospects in recent weeks, with lower 'new entrant' minimum salary, the introduction of the doctorate extension scheme and expansion of the Tier 1 Graduate Entrepreneur scheme.  No-one could describe these measures as opening the floodgates, however, and it is likely that both perception and reality will be that it remains hard for international students to find work in the UK.

Some other countries continue to move towards more generous post-study work regimes.  New websites have been launched for students wishing to stay on to work in the Netherlands and New Zealand.  The European Commission is proposing new rules to make it easier for international students and researchers to study and work in the EU (except the UK and Denmark, which are not bound by the directive in question, and with a further caveat that the granting of work permits remains a national responsibility).  And the much-vaunted changes to post-study work arrangements in Australia have now come into effect.

But already critics in Australia are sounding a warning that political pressures may yet come for this policy to be reversed if it is perceived to disadvantage local workers.  Controversial Australian academic Bob Birrell, not long ago published a report claiming international students were displacing young local workers.  Similarly, in the US a recent article argues that the case for expanding the number of work visas for international students is flawed, relying on false assumptions about whether those students are really "the best and brightest" future innovators. 

The debates are complex (and not just about immigration - what about the effects of emigration in depleting the UK skill base, as a recent Home Office report identified?), the positions are often polarised, and it remains to be seen what degree of 'policy stability' will apply in the face of competing pressures and views.

In the meantime, for anyone contemplating the logic of bringing UKBA back into the Home Office, I commend this Institute for Government statement (as tweeted by the BBC's Evan Davis).

The BIS Select Committee, Chaney and Culture at Work

Inevitably there has been much published and tweeted on the latest Home Office figures published today, showing a fall in the net migration figures, driven largely by a fall in the number of students. The pattern is very similar to the previous quarter's figures so I won't rehash the arguments. (Though, slipping through almost unnoticed is the latest version of the Migrant Journey Third Report, with updated figures for student stay rates - showing students with valid Leave to Remain in 2011, five years after entering, had reduced to 11% (compared to 17% in 2008), and those with settled status had reduced from 3% to 1%.  In the absence of any good evidence of illegal staying on, it looks as though numbers returning home are increasing steadily.)

However, it's notable that these came out on the same day that the BIS Select Committee called the government's response to its report calling for international students' exclusion from the target to reduce net migration, Too Little Too Late.  Commentators such as Jonathan Portes and Sarah Mulley have been busy reminding those who haven't yet "got it" that it's simply not compatible to include international students in a target to shrink numbers (for net migration), while simultaneously aiming to increase numbers (as an education export strategy).  The government says it doesn't want to be accused of fiddling the figures - but as colleagues in the FE and ELT sectors tell us that they are increasingly having to shift students from Tier 4 into the student visitor route (which falls outside net migration calculations), there's arguably some sleight of hand going on as part of the damage limitation, even if only at the margins.

If we were currently in a stable state, as the Home Office have promised, we might grin and bear it.  However, the Home Secretary's decision to radically increase the number of students subject to "credibility interviews" raises questions as to whether we can expect higher numbers of refusals in future - with 65,000 still to be shaved off the net migration figure, that is presumably government's hope.  UKCISA is currently surveying institutions to ascertain experience to date, but discussions at our recent FE International Network meeting highlighted real concerns about the quality and subjectivity of decision making, especially in relation to English language competence and knowledge about the course of study.

The government, of course, might argue that we're not alone in interviewing student visa applicants.  Take the Australians, with their recently introduced "Genuine Temporary Entrant" (GTE) criterion.  But guess what, the Australians, concerned that their international education industry is still not returning to its full potential, have just released another review:  Australia - Educating Globally (aka the Chaney review) recommends a review of the GTE requirement.  Perhaps this just highlights the difficulty of balancing integrity and welcome in an immigration system, but it doesn't seem that either the UK or Australia has got that balance right yet.

The Chaney report, though, is interesting because it's not just a whinge about immigration processes - it's a comprehensive overview of all the issues involved in an international education strategy, from students' daily life (healthcare, accommodation, transport costs) to quality of education, to co-ordination of strategy at national level and informing it with adequate data.  If the UK could similarly join up the pieces, we would be in a much stronger position to move forward.

On a more positive note, all this flurry of immigration-related commentary may have meant many people have missed the publication of a new British Council report on how employers in a selection of countries value intercultural skills.  I commend Culture at Work as a more inspiring read than immigration statistics, which should encourage us to think about how well we deliver intercultural skills to both UK and international students at our institutions.  That is, after all, a fundamental part of what it's all about.

Reflection in action: thoughts from the PGCert ISAS

One of the highlights of my nearly 15 years at UKCISA was right at the start, teaching the final cohort of the UKCISA/University of Nottingham MA for International Education Professionals, so I have been really looking forward to this weekend when we finally launched 'grandchild of MA IEP' aka the Postgraduate Certificate International Student Advice and Support (PG Cert ISAS).

It has been an intense and exhausting weekend but incredibly rewarding. We have a fantastically committed and engaged cohort of 17 students from across the UK, working in a range of roles and institution-types. Although the commonest shared emotion at the start seemed to have been fear - it's never easy to go back to HE after a long gap or to dive into postgraduate study without a first degree - everyone settled in quickly and contributed an excellent range of experiences and insights, thanks in large part to course leader, Belinda Harris's welcoming and inclusive style (the cup cakes seemed to help too).

The theme of this first module has been cross-cultural theory and its application to the adviser's role. As you might expect this led to reflections on all aspects of support for international students and how this is affected by the wider context - and Tier 4 in particular. Discussions really showed the benefit of having space for critical and reflective thought, on everything from how individual communication styles impact on professional approaches, to the impact on students, advisers and institutions of the creeping compliance culture in institutions. 

While this module has focused on the influence of culture, its introduction of the idea of the 'reflective practitioner' has meant that themes are already beginning to appear that link us forward to the subsequent modules on advice skills, legal frameworks and managing complexity. 

Thanks to all the students, and my fellow tutors Belinda, Qing, Zhen and Joanna for a thought-provoking weekend.  I shall look forward to many more.

The next cohort of the PG Cert ISAS will begin in February 2014.  More details on the University of Nottingham's website.

Furthering Equality in International HE

Today, some thoughts following the HEA seminar at the University of Surrey, which took the ambitious theme of Furthering Equality in International Higher Education: UK and transnational programmes 

As one delegate remarked, in many ways internationalisation and equality/diversity seem clearly linked topics, but it's remarkable how rarely the two appear on the same agenda (with occasional honourable exceptions such as work by the Equality Challenge Unit).  Later, I'll come back to what came out in today's attempts to combine the two.

But first, I want to welcome another rare juxtaposition of topics.  The three papers focused respectively on the experience of international (specifically Chinese) students in the UK, the experience of outwardly mobile students from the UK (in this case, on Erasmus work placements) and the experience of students taking UK degrees under transnational education (TNE) arrangements (in Hong Kong).  While these are generally agreed to be three of the principal aspects of student-focused internationalisation, they are rarely considered holistically, leading to some odd disconnects in the literature.

Bringing these together generated some clear common themes:

First, the potentially transformative nature of international education, as widely evidenced in the work of those who have written about "study abroad", mainly focused on credit-based mobility of organised mobility from the US and to a lesser extent European sending countries.  Contrast this with the literature on international students coming to the main receiving countries, which for quite some period focused on adjustment problems and deficit models, 'otherising' the sojourner.  Therefore Qing Gu's work on the transformative effects of UK study on Chinese students brings a welcome recognition that this transformative power is not uni-directional, and applies to all globally mobile students.  This, of course, raises a crucial question about TNE: can the same transformative effects be found from having an international education at home?  Johanna Waters research suggests that this is far from certain.  Moreover, some authors (eg Luke 2012) would argue that if all higher education is or should be transformational, we have to consider how we disentangle which transformative effects are due to the 'international' as opposed to the 'higher education' experience.

Second, the explanatory power of Bourdieu's ideas of social, education and cultural capital are incredibly useful at helping us understand why some students move, and others do not.  Hannah Deakin's work on Erasmus placement students finds language and finance to be significant barriers for UK students, coupled with lack of encouragement (or at times active opposition) from faculty.  I would suggest that while in some cases finance is a genuine barrier, there is sufficient evidence that both language and finance are barriers that can be overcome to suggest that the real issue is students' lack of social and mobility capital.  Importantly, when faculty members themselves have mobility capital, they are effective at sharing it with their students (returning students likewise do), explaining why students are far more likely to move when faculty are active international champions.

Third, a common theme in all three modalities was the importance of employability.  For students, the personal developmental aspects were important - perhaps increasingly so over time - but one test of their international experience was how it was seen by employers.

But what about equality? 

In relation to students who had studied in the UK, we touched briefly on the issues of inequalities in global flows, both at national level, and at the level of the individual.  What went unspoken was the role of financial capital here, as well as social and educational capital.  Although in countries such as China there has been a vast expansion in the numbers able to engage in study abroad, still only 2% of Chinese students study abroad.  Opportunities remain very much the preserve of elites (although here second-tier elites, as the first tier study at home), albeit on a larger scale than previously. 

In relation to TNE, which potentially extends international opportunities to those not able to leave home, the question was asked: "Is the involvement of UK universities about (equal) opportunities, or opportunism?"  The consensus was that it was perhaps 80% the latter, rather than primarily attempts to extend widening participation approaches on a global scale - although there was a recognition that for some teaching staff, the latter might be the primary motivation, and even at institutional level equality aspects might be an added bonus.  There are some interesting parallels between the perceptions of TNE as second rate compared to domestic public HE in Hong Kong, and perceptions of "more means worse" in relation to increased access in the UK, suggesting that in both cases elites seek to preserve their social and cultural capital by questioning the validity of new waves of provision.

In relation to outward mobility, Deakin's suggestion is that Erasmus work placements have potentially extended opportunities for study abroad by removing some of the financial and linguistic barriers.  However, as Annette Kratz pointed out, current Student Finance England policies on funding students abroad are much less favourable for work placements than study abroad, assuming that the former are paid, which is not always the case.  There is scope for a review of policy here if the full potential of work placements to increase outward mobility of UK students is to be realised.

Finally, one other surprising thing about today:  nobody even mentioned MOOCs (Massively Overhyped Online Courses as I like to call them), but if I were to extrapolate I would say that today's themes confirm that MOOCs are unlikely to achieve the personal transformative effects of study abroad in terms of social and cultural capital.  Moreover, if TNE is seen as the poor relation of in-country study, MOOCs must carry even less credibility.  However, MOOCs undoubtedly have a role in increasing access to HE globally.  As Andrew Ng, founder of Coursera, said this week:

"This is about education, it is not about making money, and so if you can't afford it we still want you to benefit from it. This is not the sort of decision that a normal company would make. But we are here to educate everyone."

 Now, if only the rest of the HE sector could adopt the same policy...

HESA stats: have international students passed their peak?

Today the Higher Education Statistics Agency have published their Statistical First Release of the number of students in UK higher education institutions in 2011-12.  This gives us the first official data on the number of international students in UK HE in the last academic year.  It doesn't make cheery reading for those who would like to see more international students increasing the diversity of our universities, providing fellow students with a more internationalised experience... and of course financially, numerically and academically helping to keep our HE sector the world-leading success story it currently is.  (Helping with the UK's economic recovery would of course be a bonus.)

The headline figure will no doubt be used by government to say that all is well, as the total number of non-EU students registered in 2011-12 increased 2% from the previous year.  But when compared with rises of 6%, 12% and 9% year on year in the three preceding years, it becomes hard to sustain the claim that this is a success story.

More worrying is what you see when you dig deeper. 

First year non-EU enrolments have not grown.  They have in fact dropped, although by less than 0.5%.  This means the growth in the total comes from previous years' increases working through the system.

In the context of this week's headlines about crisis in funding for UK taught postgraduates, equally worrying is the fact that non-EU postgraduate total enrolments have dropped by 1%.  Take a look at HESA's chart to see in graphic form how dependent full-time postgraduate courses are on non-EU students, and the importance of this particular drop becomes manifest.

Numerous articles in this week's Guardian have put the case for a change in policy.  Let's hope the government is listening.

International Education the Australian Way

Guest blog by Dorothy Davis and Bruce Mackintosh

While the UK, Europe and the US have been the traditional destinations for students from less developed countries, in the last quarter century Australia has become the preferred destination for many, with the third highest number of international students in the English-speaking world.  Despite concerns about massification, commercialisation and the possible consequent decline in standards, it has achieved this position through a combination of smart marketing, high educational standards and a reputation for a safe and welcoming environment for students.

A new book “Making a Difference – Australian International Education” which we have edited and is published by the UNSW Press, reveals all of the history, process and outcomes of the highly successful Australian approach.  It begins with the multiple benefits of international education to students, institutions and communities, and concludes with a look to the horizon of 2025, including the influence of the growth in open/learning/distance education, now heightened by the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

It includes a detailed account of the history of international education in Australia, from the enrolment of private international students in the early part of the 19^th century, through the significant Colombo Plan scholarship scheme of the 50s and 60s; this cemented the place of Australia in educating the brightest students from Asia and laid the foundations for the expanded, “aid through trade”, phase of international education after the Australian Government moved to allow institutions to enroll full-fee paying students as is done in the UK.  It critically analyses the role of government throughout the century or so of international student enrolments, including the vexatious issues of visas, migration and work rights.  The Australian way of marketing is described for all to see, and the role of private-public partnerships in international education is described using the highly successful Navitas, Australian based but now globally active. 

The supporting roles of off-shore programs, English language schools, English language testing, student welfare organisations, community initiatives, professionalisation and research are all covered in detail.  And the student outcomes are not overlooked with their stories interspersed throughout the book.  There is a tribute to Tony Adams, one of the most important figures in the 25 years of the development of the fee-paying program.  Fittingly the profits from sales of this book will go to the Tony Adams Fund to support professional development, research and student mobility.

This is a book for anyone who wants to understand how Australian institutions so successfully developed an effective system of international education, and how the lessons learned in that process can be applied in countries and educational institutions seeking their own success in this enterprise.

The book contains contributions from many leading policy makers and practitioners in international education and was supported by the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) and many organizations including Australian Government departments and agencies, state governments, all 39 Australian universities, institutions from other sectors, peak bodies and education-related organizations.

The latest student visa stats: what they do and don't show

Last week's immigration statistics from the Home Office were much trumpeted by a government keen to show it is being tough on immigration, stressing the headline reductions in net migration, in large measure due to a drop in international students coming to study in the UK measured variously by

• a 26% decrease in the number of visas issued in the year to September 2012 compared to the previous year; 
• a 10% drop in students entering the country for study in 2011 compared to 2010, 
• and a fall of 7% in the number of students as estimated by the International Passenger Survey for the year ending March 2012 compared to the previous year.

The headline figures, however, disguise enormous sectoral differences.

While the government may claim that the HE sector is unaffected using the figure of a 1% increase in visa applications (from 154,575 to 155,821), in the context of the global demand for international study, a 1% increase is undoubtedly a cut in market share, and at best a flatlining in terms of numbers.

Yet more worrying is what is going in in other sectors.  Even independent schools - which the government has said are not a concern in immigration terms - are showing a 17% fall.  This is unsurprising given the link between choosing a UK school and intention to progress to university - a clear sign of the damage to pathways through the education sector.

The really catastrophic evidence comes in the impact on language schools and the FE sector.  Applications for Tier 4 visas for language schools have fallen 76%, from 15,930 to a mere 3,748 in the year ending September 2012.  While some students may have opted for an Extended Student Visitor Visa instead of a Tier 4 visa (often of necessity as the number of Tier 4 sponsors in the sector has fallen), this is still a worrying trend of a decline in the long-stay segment of the market, which is important not only in its own right but as a feeder for the rest of the sector.  Equally of concern is that the FE sector (including both public FE colleges and a mix of private tertiary colleges) experienced a 67% dip from 99,296 visa applications to only 32,900 in the year ending September 2012.  A number of factors are no doubt in play here: inequitable work rights for students, the loss of licences (for colleges all parts of the sector) and closure of many private colleges, leading to bad publicity and in some cases exit from the market.

These latter figures reflect a report from Study UK earlier in the year that colleges were seeing 70% falls in applications.  Even if a proportion of these institutions or students were mis-using the student route, it seems implausible that the figure was as high as two-thirds.  The impact on genuine students and genuine colleges is clear - as are the direct and indirect knock on effects of loss of current and future business.

The Home Office figures also pick up on the rising number of student visitor visas, alongside the fall in Tier 4 visas: student visitor visas have increased by 12% to 66,569 in the year to September 2012.  Not all student visitors have to apply for a visa in advance however, so we must also look at the total number of those admitted under the student visitor category, including those who were granted this on arrival, giving a total of 262,000 in 2011.

Putting two and two together, as John Vine has done in his recent Tier 4 report, it is easy to see how he concludes:

We found a potential risk of non-genuine students opting to apply for Student (Visitor) visas instead of Tier 4. Student (Visitor) visas are not subject to the same stringent rules that are applied to Tier 4. In early 2012, for the first time since the introduction of Tier 4, a greater number of Student (Visitor) visas than Tier 4 visas were issued. The Agency needs to be alert to this to ensure that this route is not exploited in the future. 

Yet inspecting the Home Office figures, the breakdown of nationalities shows little evidence of this displacement.  Of the top ten nationalities issued visitor visas in 2011, only China, Saudi Arabia, India and Nigeria overlap with the top ten countries for Tier 4 student visas, and the scale is quite different - 52,484 Tier 4 visas to Chinese nationals compared to 7,430 student visitor visas, 34,827 Tier 4 visas for Indian students compared to 3,659 student visitor visas.  In terms of student visa admissions, almost half are from the US (and though I've heard it said that Brits are one of the largest groups of illegal aliens in the US, I've never heard that the reverse was true.)  So while John Vine's assessment of the potential weakness of the student visitor route may be correct, the statistics don't yet show evidence of displacement.

If these figures give us cause for concern, it is not over potential abuse of the student route, but about the impact of Tier 4 on the education sector as a whole, including the warning signals that in a year's time even higher education could be seeing really significant falls in new student numbers unless there are significant changes soon in the government's student immigration policy.

Mapping global flows

If you're interested in global flows of international students in any direction, it's well worth a look at UNESCO's new interactive map on the global flow of tertiary students.  If you select UK in the drop down box, and click on "where do students come from", the map of the world turns even pinker than in the heyday of the British Empire.  If ever there was a graphic indication of the soft-power potential of international student mobility, this is it.

While we nervously wait to see whether more or fewer international students come to the UK in the current climate it's worth noting that emerging education hub Singapore is reporting a marked drop in its international student numbers, and Australia continues to report a decline in numbers in all sectors in its latest figures, despite strenuous efforts to reverse some of the immigration and safety factors which have made it less attractive in recent years (it can do little about the strength of its currency).

Now go back to the UNESCO map and look at the outward flows for the UK.  With the caveat that the data is incomplete (no data for instance on the country of origin of any students in China), it's worth comparing the small total outward mobility from the UK with the aspirations expressed in a recent British Council study in which one in three respondents thought they would have benefited from living or studying abroad.  While raising domestic student fees may changes the incentives (HSBC reckons studying in the UK is now the fourth most expensive option for English students) that policy alone may not be a game changer. [See Rachel Brooks' blog on the evidence to date.]

Compare once again with Australia.  Following a white paper on Australia in the Asian Century, the Australian government is committing A$37 million  (£24 million) to a grants scheme for study abroad in Asia
 which aims to help over 10,000 Australians gain experience of work or study in Asia.  Now that might really make its mark on the map.

The highly skilled migrants debate

It's desperately depressing to hear Theresa May at the Conservative Party Conference equating the recruitment of international students with "importing more and more immigrants" and describing it as "the counsel of despair".

Thankfully, for every voice seeking to throw up the walls of fortress Brtain a little higher, there are equal numbers advocating the opposite (though according to May these are "vested interests").

A new Policy Exchange report on digital entrepreneurship argues for reinstating a two-year post-study visa for STEM graduates, as well as other relaxations of visa requirements for skilled migrants.  They cite the US as an example to follow - although the US is currently reporting a decline in immigrant-led entrepreneurship - perhaps due to tighter visa restrictions.  Although both Democrats and Republicans have put forward bills for an increase in the number of visas available to international students to stay on and work, none have yet been adopted.  Unlike Germany, where the new blue card scheme is proving attractive to international students. 

Meanwhile the Economist laments the 11% drop in international students enrolling on Economist-ranked UK MBAs (and similarly for European MBAs more generally), due to the lack of post study work options, the London Met debacle and the slump in the European economy.  Their figures show that it is Canada and Australia who are benefitting from their more welcoming visa stance and booming economies, while MBAs in Asia are also on the up.  It counsels that "If rich countries do not lay out welcome mats soon, they may find the queues outside their doors have disappeared."

Perhaps as a result of immigration policies increasing focus on higher-skilled migrants (if encouraging immigration at all), it is interesting to note that a recent OECD report finds that the proportion of migrants who are graduates has increased: a third of those who arrived in OECD countries in the last five years have a degree, and in countries including the UK, that figure rises to half.  (This has potential implications for brain drain - although, on a related note Professor Sharun Mukand's recent paper argues that relaxing immigration rules could benefit the global economy, and be an effective tool for development and poverty reduction - so perhaps brain circulation wins out after all.)

And another useful statistic from another recent OECD paper (see link above), for those concerned about the balance of net migration in the UK.  The report finds that 1.7 million highly educated migrants within the OECD area are from India, 1.3 million from the Philippines, 1.2 million from China... and 1.3 million from the UK. Good thing for our net migration figures that so many other countries have a welcoming immigration policy...

Human Rights and Human Wrongs

This month the Australian Human Rights Commission has published Principles to promote and protect the human rights of international students.  As Dr Helen Szoke, the Race Discrimination Commissioner said at the launch:

Each year, families all over the globe bid farewell to loved ones as they set out overseas – to study, to work, to explore a wider world. They do so expecting that these loved ones will be treated with respect and with dignity – that they will have the same sort of access to services as others at their destination; that they will be safe; that their rights as human beings will be recognised wherever they go....

...[but] social isolation, poverty, exclusion from health services or affordable housing, sexual harassment and exploitation, excessive transport costs, and prohibitive fees to access government schools for their children are just some of the disadvantages confronting those who rightly come expecting more.

This is in addition, of course, to the occasional physical violence we know has been experienced by some in recent years; as well as the discrimination and hostility that many report.

All of this means that some international students experience life in Australia as second class members of the community, despite their hopes of a first class education.

The principles advocate for

• the removal of barriers to equality and equality of access to basic services such as health and housing
• providing access to complaints procedures and legal redress
• understanding the diversity of international students' needs
• encouragement of international student participation and engagement

If we use these as a measure of international students'  experiences in the UK, how do we shape up?

On the plus side, international students do have good access to health services and education for their children (at least, for those decreasing number allowed to bring dependants), to travel discounts and at least optional accommodation accreditation schemes.  There are also lots of interesting examples of ways institutions promote student participation and engagement in the UK, though inevitably this is work in progress.

On the negative side, although violent incidents such as the murder of Anuj Bidve are exceptional, evidence shows that international students, like students from BME communities in the UK, do encounter racism (see for instance the NUS No Place for Hate report), and this is an area where we must not be complacent about its impact and the need for support.  (As an aside, there's an interesting Inside Higher Ed article on how some US campuses are challenging online hate speech - a reminder that students encounter racism on campus as well as off.)

On complaints and legal redress, we are currently working with sector bodies to see how these issues can be addressed more systematically across the sectors (public and private), to identify gaps and propose how they can be filled.  Licence revocations and college closures over the last year have demonstrated the potential vulnerability of international students.  For those who have taken the leap to come here, we owe them at the very least a safety net.  But how best to put that in place?  Where should responsibility lie?  Thoughts and comments welcome.

Outward mobility: spontaneity and strategy

Last week's European Association for International Education (EAIE) conference in Dublin was, as ever, an excellent place to be if you're interested in student mobility in any direction, and gives me a good excuse to pick up on a variety of mobility-related topics.

If you're interested in the changing face of global student mobility, there are few better places to start than the latest OECD Education at a Glance analysis of changes and trends, "Who studies abroad and where?". It shows that international student mobility has continued to grow strongly, not just matching but outstripping the growth of tertiary enrolment globally.  The picture is still dominated by the traditional big receiving countries, but they are generally losing market share while growth is fastest in non-traditional destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean, Oceania and Asia, in part reflecting growth of regional mobility.  Nonetheless, there's an extraordinarily long way to go before there is any sort of balance of the flows of international students globally.

Taking that issue to our own back yard, some recent statistics from the Netherlands give an indication whether the much publicised rise in UK students going there is real and significant.  The national mobility agency, NUFFIC, produces excellent statistics on international student mobility, showing that students from the UK are now the sixth biggest group of "diploma mobile" students (ie those registered for full degrees), numbering 1,142 in 2011-12 compared to 792 in 2007-08, on a moderately steady upward trend (a further 500 or so were in the Netherlands for "credit mobility" via Erasmus etc).  Our own inestimable HESA shows me that there were 3,340 Dutch students registered at UK HEIs in 2010-11 (the latest year for which data is available), so we have some way to go until we achieve a balance of flows, even with a neighbouring and anglophone-friendly country.

This week the Student Room suggests that this isn't due to lack of interest but lack of knowledge.  Their survey found 72% of UK were interested in studying at a university abroad, but 56% didn't know how to apply.  Wandering round the exhibition at the EAIE showed that the answer is easy:

1. Pick a country.
2. Type into your browser www.studyin[name of country].[appropriate contraction of country name for web URL] eg www.studyindenmark.dk
3. Hey presto, you've got a national gateway to study in said country. (or alternatively see UKCISA's list of country contacts for all those that don't quite fit the rule).

This plethora of agencies and websites promoting inward mobility is reflected in recent research on national mobility strategies by the Academic Cooperation Association (presented at EAIE), which showed that most countries focus their efforts on promoting inward degree mobility and outward credit mobility (from which inward credit mobility is merely a side-effect).  Hence for the outwardly diploma-mobile student, there is still the problem of navigating that bewildering choice of "studyin..." websites, and no single gateway to help.  (Though watch this space - plans are currently afoot in the UK for an outward portal of some kind.)

For the most part, of course, national mobility strategies are most actively fulfilled at institutional level, where there is no stake in promoting outward diploma mobility (quite the contrary).  As the recent European University Association MAUNIMO study shows, efforts to implement mobility strategies at institutional level, let alone at national level, meet with limited success and reveal a wide range in levels of awareness, buy-in and expertise.  So despite the growing interest in international student mobility at a national level in many countries, we can expect the global patterns of mobility to change only incrementally, even as the absolute numbers increase at a much faster pace.

'What's in a welcome?' - Intercultural experiences

“What’s in a welcome?”

Intercultural Learning from Internships and Study Abroad

Helen Spencer-Oatey, University of Warwick

If you were starting a new job or a new course, what kind of welcome would you count as “warm”?  Students on the MSc Intercultural Communication for Business & the Professions (run by the Centre for Applied Linguistics, CAL, at the University of Warwick) were in for some surprises when they went on their four-week Experiential Placement module in the summer term. This optional module offers students the opportunity to work or study in a ‘culturally unfamiliar’ setting and to put into practice many of the things they have learned during their master’s course.

Six of the students went to CAL’s partner university in Beijing, the University of International Business and Economics. Their welcome was extremely formal. Seated around a very large mahogany table, the Dean of the School of International Studies (SIS), Professor Dr Wang Lifei and the Party Secretary of the SIS Communist Committee, Ms Zhang Cuiping, gave formal speeches to welcome the students. In response, they were expected to give return speeches. The welcome meeting was followed by a sumptuous banquet. The students were overwhelmed and hugely impressed by the grandeur of the events. 

In contrast, many of the Chinese students who undertook work placements in local UK organisations were welcomed quite differently - their boss offered to get them a cup of tea to help settle them in. Here are their reactions: “This wouldn’t be possible in China. The first meeting must be formal and serious so that managers can show their authority and new staff can show their respect.” “In China subordinates take initiatives to meet the needs of their boss. Letting superiors do things for subordinates is disrespectful and shameful.”  When asked what impression it conveyed if a boss made tea for a newcomer, their response was immediate: “Something serious is about to happen, like being fired!”  In fact, such a negative meaning is conveyed in a Chinese saying: The boss invites you to drink tea.¹ Fortunately, the students were sensible enough to realise it was a cultural difference and not to get too worried!

All students were required to keep an ‘Intercultural Learning Journal’, drawing on the intercultural theories they had learned during their course to help them reflect on and analyse their experiences. They were unanimous that they had grown immensely during their placement. One explained it like this:

‘How can s/he behave like this?’, ‘What’s wrong with her/him?’, ‘S/he must be crazy, I would never do such stupid things.’ For a long time I had those ideas when I experienced something different from what I thought it should be. The first time I got a low grade for my assignment during the course, I asked what was wrong with the British grading system. The first time I had a misunderstanding with my Indian flat mate, I questioned how he could behave like this. … My reaction echoes the words of Shaules (2007: 73) ²:  “When our environment is different than what we are used to, we automatically seek to explain, justify or criticize unusual phenomena in order to maintain our sense that we operate in a meaningful world. … we are not far away from being prejudiced.” However, with the passage of time, and accumulation of this cultural experience in the UK, I found myself being less judgmental and more tolerant and open towards differences.

As another put it, “a precious experience to promote further understanding”.

¹ 老板请你喝茶

² Shaules, J. (2007) Deep Culture. The Hidden Challenges of Global Living. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Towards a Canadian international education policy

Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has just published the report of a working party on producing a national international education strategy.  If you're surprised that they don't already have one, bear in mind that education is controlled at provincial, not national level, and while provinces such as British Columbia have had active policies for more than a decade, others have evolved more slowly.  

For a UK reader, International Education: A Key Driver of Canada’s Future Prosperity will have echoes of familiarity for those who remember the Prime Minister's Initiative (the panel even says that it "sees the Prime Minister as a unifying champion for international education").  In places there are even explicit references to aspects of UK international education policy which the report reccommends Canada learn from: such as the "complex and multifaceted bilateral agreements with priority countries" (presumably UKIERI and UK China).

However, before anyone in the UK is tempted to bask in reflected glory or assume the Canadians are just playing catch-up, there are some important issues here.  A central message of the report is that the UK (and US, Australia and New Zealand) are currently facing some significant challenges, and that Canada is well-placed to step in and claim greater market share (the suggested target is to double Canada's 240,000 in 2011 by 2022).  It "define[s] Canada’s value proposition as one of offering high quality at affordable costs in a safe, multicultural environment."  A key issue here is that Canada is not just looking for international students to come, study and return home.  With significant issues about meeting future labour market needs, this policy is as much about skilled migration as it is about exports and soft power. 

A second issue is that while Canada is becoming more strategic in its approach to international education, the UK has been steadily losing focus on this issue.  Current tensions between the Coalition government's immigration policy objectives, and its economic and educational objectives are currently impeding any joined-up (or as the Canadian report calls it "aligned") policies.  And whereas in Canada the lead is coming from the department responsible for foreign affairs, here the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is far from leading, while BIS and the Home Office try to reconcile their differing objectives.

On a more positive note, all those who believe more UK students should be encouraged to study abroad (something on which David Willetts and Damian Green can no doubt agree, though probably for different reasons), will be heartened to see that the Canadians are recommending that "substantial resources" be invested in maintaining mature markets such as the UK.  So although on the one hand it's tempting to shout "The Canadians are coming!" in relation to their increasingly active international education policy, let's hope we can balance it with "And the Brits are heading over there in response!".  After all, international strategies shouldn't be all one way.

No more international students?

Finally coming up for air after the UKCISA conference 2012, out of many interesting sessions, the one which has made most impact was Jonathan Rees and Gail Horton's thought-provoking session Who then really is an international student?

As they demonstrated, our "home" student population is increasingly diverse in terms of background in terms of residence, schooling, parental nationality, etc.  Similarly, many "international" students have some degree of previous experience of living or studying in the UK.  The categories are a mere administrative convenience relating to fee status or immigration status, but may not reflect students' own sense of identity, or give any meaningful clue as to whether they have any particular support needs relating language, cultural adaptation or visa formalities.  Worse still, does such labelling further inhibit integration, and encourage "othering" and an "us/them" mentality on campus - not only among students, but also between students and staff?

So what are the implications of this?  What would it look like if we dropped the "international" label?  Should "International Offices" be replaced by "Mobility and Visa Services Offices"?  One orientation programme for all, with pick and mix sessions for those who need on visas, cultural adaptation etc? (We know that's already happening in increasing numbers of institutions).  Should Language Support be more fully integrated with Study Support?  No doubt there are countless other examples where we could question our current labelling and categorising.

So when I find myself drawn to the idea of "No more international students", it's not in the sense that some of the more xenophobic of our press and public might mean.  Instead lets just drop the labels: a student is a student is a student.  Let's find more inclusive ways of supporting diversity.