Internationalisation - compete or collaborate?
Prof Drummond Bone recent report on changes in the market for international students, International issues in Higher Education, predicts that the current market model UK HEIs operate with is unsustainable and we will have increasing difficulty attracting international students to study here. The report identifies two main reasons for this. Firstly, Universities in the less developed countries that currently provide us with a large proportion of our overseas student are modernising fast and are becoming more attractive to their home students and employers. Secondly, non-english speaking countries are beginning to put on programmes and schemes taught entirely in English including Germany, Sweden, even France! And these will start competing for our home students. There are is an interesting article and leader on this in the THES today: The language of competition by Matthew Reisz and Everyone is talking the talk, a leader by Ann Mroz.
The DIUS report is is worth looking at for its recommendations on how we should approach the recruitment of international students in the future - teaching and supervising in partnership with overseas institutions and internationalising our curriculum and programmes to make them more relevant to overseas and our home students.