Category: Europe

The Turing Scheme: new horizons for international student mobility

“Given the far-reaching benefits of international experience, it’s vital as many young people as possible have the chance to access it”

‘We can see only a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.’ So said the pioneering mathematician and computer scientist, Alan Turing, in whose honour the Turing Scheme – the UK Government’s global programme to study and work abroad – is named.

It’s a quote that seems to speak to our times: the uncertainty that has defined recent years and the global challenges ahead. Turing himself studied abroad and, as applications open for this year’s funding, I hope he would forgive me for borrowing his words to reflect on the key challenges and priorities in international student mobility.

“One particular aspect of additional support that Guardians have offered is the provision of holiday camps during school holidays”

The additional stresses to both existing and new students due to Covid cannot be overestimated. Many existing students have not been able to return home for over 18 months, whilst some new students have been bewildered on arriving in the UK without the benefits of a prior visit due to Covid restrictions.

“This is why we have now added a medical questionnaire at the start of UK Education Guide’s student screening process, to particularly highlight any existing mental health issues,” says director, Rafael Garcia-Krailing.

March 4, 2022
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Accommodation, Boarding schools, Europe, UK

How to help academics in the Ukraine right now

“We need one Computer Science department that is able to program an app that can link the needs of the academics with the offers on European side”

As someone working in internationalisation of higher education and teaching international relations, I have spent quite some time in the last days how we in our specific area might be able to help the Ukraine – besides what we all do: donations, food, psychological support. And here is a very practical idea what we in higher education can do to help Ukrainian academics, writes Uwe Brandenburg, managing partner and founder of the Global Impact Institute in Prague.

“Hybrid working helped cushion the study travel sector from the disruption caused by the pandemic”

Travel restrictions swept across the UK in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which disabled the movement of international students and the operational ability of the study travel industry.

Countries across the globe closed their borders and transitioned to a traffic light system that ranked countries according to their Covid risk level. The UK immigration system was also pushed into limbo which sparked fears that the international student population in the UK would drastically reduce, writes Keith Tully is a partner at Real Business Rescue.

But yet, the study travel industry showing resilience in the face of Covid-19.

“Telling a Chinese student to critically appraise a text can often make them feel uncomfortable and the word ‘critical’ suggests ‘censure’”

A recent survey from UKI Student and School Forum and featured in The PIE News highlighted that international boarding school students, despite having potentially studied for several years in the UK, still worry about studying at degree level.

The transition to the UK education system is not an easy one for any international young person to make, but Paul Breen, from University of Westminster has some strong views on how the transition could be eased.

Rethinking university strategies for global engagement: insights from the UK

In the UK, as elsewhere, 2020 was a year of fire-fighting and crisis management in the higher education sector. As we slowly regain the bandwidth to consider future plans, what role will global engagement play in post-pandemic strategies? How will this build on what went before? And what will need to be different as institutions seek to find their place within a much-altered global higher education landscape?

These are questions which Vicky Lewis Consulting tried to address through research conducted in late 2020 and early 2021, which has now been published in the form of a report for the HE sector: UK Universities Global Engagement Strategies: time for a rethink?

“We want to help improve the dignity of the living conditions for refugees by supporting more programs”

Increasing numbers of young people at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands start to work on projects aiming to make the world a better place and deal with our scarce resources in a more sustainable way, says the institution’s Désirée van Gorp, professor of international business.

I work with at least 60 students every year who start their own projects, but unfortunately by the time their MBA or master’s is finished, these and many more projects often disappear left unfinished.

We started thinking about how we could create a community of students and alumni that would keep working on societal centric projects as a continuation of all the great work being done during our students’ degree programs. This is what we came up with.

April 13, 2021
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Europe, Higher education, Innovation, Volunteering

The challenges of employing international faculty

“International faculty’s lack of knowledge about local cultural contexts can be an insurmountable challenge”

Employing international faculty can have massive benefits for universities but it can also present a number of challenges, writes Tsediso Michael Makoelle, vice dean of research at Nazarbayev University’s Graduate School of Education.

Moving to any new country involves a new cultural environment which more often than not can cause international faculty to experience culture shock. When faculty experience this culture shock, many can struggle to adapt and adjust to this new cultural environment, including grappling with aspects such as language. In some cases, this could adversely affect their psychological and emotional well-being, leading to underperformance at work.

September 15, 2020
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Europe, Higher education, Internationalisation

Interest in studying in Germany still strong among Indians despite Covid-19

“Almost everyone was very worried about the prospect of entering an unfavourable job market upon graduation”

Covid-19 is first and foremost a health crisis, writes UCL Institute of Education research fellow Sazana Jayadeva, but research into how the pandemic has impacted postgraduate-level student mobility from India to Germany suggests that health-related fears about studying in Germany during a pandemic were largely absent among both current and prospective students.

Between March and June 2020, I conducted interviews with Indian postgraduate students in Germany, as well as digital ethnographic fieldwork in mutual-help Facebook and WhatsApp groups used by prospective students to navigate the process of going to Germany for study.

The vast majority of my interlocutors were studying or applying to engineering postgraduate courses (reflecting the fact that the majority of Indian students in Germany are studying engineering).

Among my interlocutors, there was a feeling that Germany was handling the pandemic well, the healthcare system was robust, and international students were being well supported. Rather than health and safety, their main concerns centred on two issues.

August 24, 2020
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Europe, India, International student recruitment

Student mobility needs to be more than just east to west

“Asian students appear to travel within Asia or to western countries, but western students are not yet studying in Asia at the same level”

The flow of students in higher education has historically been from Asia to western nations, with most international students studying in Europe, North America or Australia, writes Loretta O’Donnell, vice provost of Academic Affairs at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. However, this trend has been changing for a number of years and is now more multi-directional.

In 2019 China hosted more international students than both Canada or Australia, with the top five highest intakes coming from South Korea, Thailand, Pakistan, India, and the US. Japan also saw an almost 11% increase in international student uptake compared to the previous year, while the UK saw a 2% decrease between 2018 and 2019.