An International Student Bubble?

Something of a mania for international students seems to be developing. In a single issue of University World News there are stories from Canada, China and Poland about plans to recruit students from abroad.

From Canada

A new report urging Canadian universities to nearly double international student enrolment by 2022 signals a fundamental policy change in Canada.

The report, released last week, recommends that Canada increase the number of foreign students from 240,000 in 2011 to 450,000 by 2022.

The government-appointed panel led by Amit Chakma, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Western Ontario, also laid out a blueprint for how the federal government ought to support universities in their recruitment efforts.

From China

China has been wooing foreign universities and foreign students in a bid to internationalise its universities and as part of a ‘soft power’ policy to project itself internationally.

“China wants to be seen as a major player internationally in terms of education,” said Anthony Welch, a professor of international education at the University of Sydney.

“There is a clear national policy in China of ‘soft power’ using education. I would argue that is a good thing for all partners,” said Yang Rui, an assistant professor in Hong Kong University’s faculty of education.

The article by Yojana Sharma also refers to efforts by universities and governments in Malaysia and Singapore to recruit more students from abroad

From Poland

Polish universities have introduced a free iPhone and iPad app to spread information internationally about opportunities in Polish higher education, and an Android version is promised soon.

The use of the latest technology will move the promotion of Polish higher education to a completely new level, according to a Polish Press Agency report quoting Dr Wojciech Marchwica of the Perspektywy Educational Foundation (Fundacja Edukacyjna Perspektywy), coordinator of the Study in Poland programme.

The universities are hoping to attract high-quality students from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

A few years ago, Ukraine was declared by the Study in Poland coordinating committee to be a priority source country, as it is tied to Poland by history, culture and geographical proximity.

The effort has already brought measurable results: the number of students from Ukraine grew from 1,989 in 2005 to 6,321 in 2012, an increase of more than 300%. In 2009 Study in Poland opened its first foreign office in Kyiv, at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

China, Canada, Poland, Singapore and Malaysia are  not the only places struggling for more international students.

So why is there such a craze for moving students back and forth across international borders?

One reason for adding more international students is that it is probably the easiest  way to rise in the rankings (excluding ARWU) and the one with the quickest returns for universities outside the top 200 or 300. Getting faculty to do research and write papers is not always popular and may produce a backlash especially if senior staff have political connections. Writing papers that are  readable and citeable is even more difficult. Recruiting faculty to boost faculty student ratios can be expensive and may have an adverse impact on other indicators. The QS surveys are rather opaque and the THE citations indicator painfully complicated. But finding students who can cross a frontier to get a degree is comparatively easy and may even pay for itself. For University College Cork just one international student would pay for the cost of joining the QS Stars.

There are other reasons. Canada appears to be hunting for students from abroad as proxy for a meritocratic immigration policy. The problem here is that those talented engineers and computer scientists may be followed by not so talented spouses, siblings and cousins. China appears to be using universities to further diplomatic objectives and Poland seems to be trying to challenge Russian cultural hegemony.