If I was Aladdin and had his magic lamp, what would my three wishes be to magic up improvements to the UK’s international strategy for higher education – which is due for review by ‘officials’ in the new year?
And what would I drop from the existing UK international education strategy, or IES, remembering it was put together as part of a rather rushed realignment of Britain’s relationship with the world and the predicted fall in foreign trade following Britain’s Brexit withdrawal from the European Union’s single market for trade and free movement of people between the EU and UK?
For balance, I also include the view from outside the UK, as I ask an expert in Sino-Anglo higher education relations, Dr Cheryl Yu, for her three wishes from a Chinese perspective.
Former Tory Universities and Science Minister (Lord) David Willetts also wished for policy changes in his chapter in the Universities UK ‘blueprint for change’ published in the Autumn, entitled ‘Global reach, reputation and impact’.
There’s no lack of ideas to choose from, as WONKHE associate editor (SUs) Jim Dickinson discovered when he dived into what other countries’ international education strategies appear to be do better than the Brits.
First wish for actual strategy
But giving it more thought than Aladdin probably had time for over the Christmas break, here’s my three wishes for whoever is doing the redraft of the IES, at least when it comes to higher education.
First, I wish the UK had an actual strategy rather than just plucking a number out of thin air for how many international students the UK can provide with a good quality higher education experience – and that includes finding them with somewhere decent to live while they are here at an affordable rent
The 600,000 target by 2030 was set back in 2019, before COVID-19 turned things upside down, and many thought it was too modest if the UK government actually took off the brakes to international recruitment.
Did no one foresee what might happen if incentives were introduced, like post-graduate work opportunities and trying to get as many one-year masters’ students as possible from countries like Nigeria and India and letting them bring their family with them?
Target backfired
That all backfired badly after the 600,000 target was breached within a couple of years, with the number of foreign students soaring from 460,000 (before the IES) in 2017-18 to 758,855 in 2022-23.
Now, the number of overseas students in the UK is widely predicted to go into freefall after a previous Home Secretary, Suella Braverman tried to try to derail the IES, first by banning foreign masters’ students from bringing dependants from the start of 2024, and then by attempting to slash the Graduate (work) Route from 2 years to 6 months.
The Graduate Route was probably only saved when Rishi Sunak gave up the will to govern anymore and called a snap General Election.
So, I’m with Lord Willetts in wishing that the HE sector and newish Labour government establish some sort of deal, or ‘compact’ to use his policy-making language, that delivers “stable and sustainable levels of international student recruitment and well-managed growth”.
Wish 2: Bring Home Office onside
My second wish is to learn from recent experience and avoid the Home Office snipping from the side-lines at any future strategy designed to “grow” international student recruiting.
Remember Theresa May and her ‘hostile environment’ towards foreigners when she was Home Secretary!
It was madness to exclude the Home Office from co-ownership of the previous IES and the Home Office should become co-owners of the new international education strategy, together with the Department for International Trade (DIT) and Department for Education (DfE), to help ensure the next IES fits in with other government priorities, such as growing the economy while managing sensible levels of migration.
Perhaps, this could even lead to the British government helping talented bright overseas students stay in the UK to set-up news businesses and fill the skills gaps.
This would be better than just recruiting foreign students to boost UK university coffers because the current system of funding domestic students is hopeless, both for universities and students.
A first step could be to steal ideas from the likes of Ireland and Finland and instead of banning international students from being self-employed encourage them to set up businesses while they are studying and not wait until after they graduate.
Wish 3: Two-way study abroad
My third wish is actually shared with Cheryl Yu whose three wishes come a little further down this blog.
I first set up De la Cour Communications, back in 2012, to help efforts to encourage more British students to go abroad for at least part of their higher education as part of two-way student mobility.
So, I wish that Keir Starmer summons up the courage to do a deal with the European Commission and join some sort of youth mobility scheme with the EU, possibly as a step towards re-joining the Erasmus+ programme.
That would allow British universities to get fully involved with things like the European Universities Alliances and encourage students to study at different institutions in different countries for things like joint degrees.
Britain already lets young people from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Korea and a number of non-EU countries, including Iceland, Monaco and San Marino (as well as Uruguay) live and work in the UK for up to 2 years.
So, what is holding back agreeing to let young people from EU countries do the same in return for UK students being allowed to work or study in EU countries as part of a reset in relations between the UK and the European Union.
Come on Keir have the courage of your previous (pro-EU) convictions!
Cheryl’s Sino-Anglo wishes
Now, for three wishes from Cheryl Yu, who has become a leading voice in UK-China university relations as co-founder of Higher Education Connected and secretary of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding.
First, maintain, or even regain, the UK’s global prestige and reputation in the China market beyond the rankings by being selective in attracting the brightest students.
Studying abroad now serves as an alternative for students with lower prior academic achievement who cannot get into a top university in China and no longer carries the highest credential in the job market in China, she says.
This is largely down to the ease with which top Chinese graduates can get into a top UK university, even UCL or LSE, or even Oxbridge, as British universities opened the floodgates to international masters’ students and used international tuition fees to balance the books as domestic tuition were frozen in time by the May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak Tory governments.
Internationalisation of UK students
Second, Cheryl wants a future IES to talk about the internationalisation of UK students and says: “There is a real lack of incentive and encouragement for British students to leave the country to study outside the country.
“Chinese universities would definitely welcome more UK students for short-term or longer-term studies.
“Through mutual mobility, international education would stand stronger than, or move beyond, the geo-politics.”
Her third wish is for greater attention to the “employability of international students, either in the UK or back to their home countries”.
She contrasts the lack of support for international students in the UK with the career/employer recruitment fairs for students throughout their last year at a leading Chinese university, which gives employers a direct relationship with universities – and students.
Nightmares for Chinese students
Her nightmares for Chinese students are something I can also share.
They include the fear that the new ‘desperate for economic growth’ Labour government will repeat the last government’s obsession with just seeing international education as an easy way to make billions of pounds through so-called ‘education exports’ and by pulling unstainable targets out of the sky.
Remember, the last IES talked about making £35 billion from education exports (recruiting students to Britain and UK transnational education abroad) by 2030. This represented a 75% increase, but based on 3.3% annual growth in international student numbers, as experts like Dr Janet Ilieva of Education Insight pointed out when the strategy was launched in 2019.
Export rather than education
Cheryl says the UK current international education strategy “positions international education as an export product/service, rather than an educational provision for the wider progress of society” and adds that the massive expansion of international students, without a progressive and robust supporting mechanism, means Chinese students often “feel like a tool for revenue generation”.
She is also kept awake at night by the nightmare of Chinese students arriving in the UK with IELTS 6.0 level of English, but leaving the country with IELTS 5.5 after one year of study in the UK because half of their classmates are Chinese and their standard of English is worse when they leave than when they arrive.
I saw that myself when working in university PR when French students out-numbered all other students in chemistry classes through student exchanges at Teesside University and their French tutors complained that their students’ level of English had declined because the French students all lived and socialised together and didn’t mix with British and other students and just spoke French all the time.
So, there’s quite a few ideas here for whoever is putting together the next UK international education strategy. And it should please Chancellor Rachel Reeves that most of my and Cheryl’s wishes don’t have big price tags.
Hope, at least some of our wishes come true in 2025!
- Main image from Teesside University
