What good are international faculty?

In the previous post I did a bit of fiddling around with correlations and found that UK universities' scores for the international student indicator in the QS world rankings did not correlate very much with beneficial outcome for students such as employability and course completion. They did, however, correlate quite well with spending per student.

That would suggest that British universities want lots of international students because it is good for their finances.

What about international faculty?

Comparing the scores for various outcomes with the QS international faculty score shows that in most cases correlation is low and statistically insignificant. This includes course satisfaction and   satisfaction with teaching (Guardian University League Tables), and completion and student satisfaction (THE TEF simulation).

There is, however, one metric that is positively, albeit modestly, and significantly associated with international students and that is the Research Excellence Framework score (REF) score (from Complete University Guide): .284 (sig (2-tailed) .043), N 51).

So it seems that international students are valued for the money they bring with them and international faculty for boosting research quality.

Caveat: this applies to highly ranked universities in the UK. How far it is true of other places or even less prestigious British institutions remains to be seen.