More about Internationalisation

There is a very interesting piece by Ahmad Ismail at highnetworth -- acknowledgement to Education in Malaysia -- that argues that the economic value of an overseas university education for a Malaysian student is minimal. There are, no doubt, going to be questions about the assumptions behind the financial calculations and there are of course other reasons for studying abroad.


Even so, if students themselves typically gain little or nothing economically from studying in another country and if their parents suffer a great deal and if students or taxpayers in the host country in one way or another have to pick up the tap (at Cornell it takes USD1,700 to recruit an international student) then one wonders what internationalisation has to do with university quality. And one wonders why THES and QS consider it so important