How to support and attract European students post Brexit

“Marketing of British higher education institutions needs to be relevant in this time of disruption”

The United Kingdom’s departure from the EU is a complex and controversial political process, now extended until January 2020. We are the second most popular study destination in the world for international students, behind the US, with almost 460,000 international students in 2017/18, with 30.3% of these coming from the EU.

Clearly, international students are very important to the UK’s higher education sector. Although Brexit should not concern European students currently studying in the UK up to Autumn 2020, as they will be granted “home status” by the government, it does pose a difficult level of uncertainty for European students going forward. Students who arrive after we leave the EU will need to apply for European temporary leave to remain in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

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Looking for a Pathway Partner? Part 2: Funding New Programming

“University financial decisions that fail to take the full… benefits of international students into consideration tend to underinvest in getting/holding on to those students”

  • Part 2 of our 4 part series on pathway programs. For part 1, please click here

In our previous post, we discussed the potential of a Coordinated International Student Support Infrastructure (or, CISSI) model as a way of creating a holistic, monitored, and appropriately invested approach to supporting international students. 

Key to this approach is identifying, testing, and continuously improving the services available to international students.  And doing this takes appropriate investment: time, expertise, energy, and yes — money.

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Why Australia can’t afford to neglect international students

“We must continue viewing students as an asset, not just to our economy, but to the prosperity of our nation”

 Have you ever stopped to think about what Australia would be like without international education? Australia’s education industry supports 240,000 jobs. If all those people suddenly became unemployed, our unemployment rate would jump from 5.2% to 7.1%. With a $37.7 billion hole in Australia’s economy, either taxes would go up, or spending on services would go down.

In the past, Australia’s prosperity was driven via wool, wheat and energy exports. Today, international education is one of the country’s strongest revenue generators, with recent federal department of education statistics revealing that over 700,000 international students have lived, worked and studied in Australia this year to date.

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International universities adopts GLOCAL mantra

“The world is rapidly transforming, and with it, our education systems need to evolve to”

In the past, it was accepted that an education system which revolved around competitive exams would prepare students for the job market. Accumulating knowledge was the driving force behind success, but now after digital disruption, (where information is available at your fingertips), this is not the case anymore. The world is rapidly transforming, and with it, our education systems need to evolve to.

Jobs today are fluid, requiring an array of skills ranging from critical thinking, communication and domain knowledge. Further, with the advent of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and other technological advancements, nobody knows what the careers of the future will look like, what activities will be uniquely human and how organizations will find a balance between automation and human delivered output.

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Generation Greta: education & the global climate crisis

“A student could do 10,000 hours of contact time in the classroom, and only hear about environmental issues or discuss the effects of climate change in ten of them”

Barnaby Sandow, Head of School at ACS International School Cobham, asks how we can re-focus our approach to education to realistically frame the growing global climate crisis.

Environmental education is not consistent in the UK. Whilst it encompasses multiple topics and skills, environmental education has no defined syllabus or structure, which means in practice, it’s a subject matter that ‘falls through the gaps’.

It’s entirely possible that a student could do 10,000 hours of contact time in the classroom, and only hear about environmental issues or discuss the effects of climate change in ten of them. As each #FridaysForFuture protest passes, it’s starkly obvious that we need an education ready to support ‘Generation Greta’.

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What next for differential pricing?

“News of different price arrangements based on country could very easily go viral with a negative impact on reputations and on business”

Language schools in many parts of the world will often charge a lower price to say, a student from Colombia than to a student from Saudi Arabia, a lower price for a Turk than for a Japanese. 

This practice is commonly referred to as “pricing to the market” and has evolved in large measure because course rates can be viewed as unaffordable – or at least as uncompetitive – by students in certain countries or regions.

Schools may refer to “special offers” or “country promotions” as a rationale for the discounting; those terms are, however, frequently used as a cover for what is, in fact, a permanent differential pricing policy.

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Looking for a Pathway Partner? Maybe Check in the Mirror

“Even without a partner, you can still benefit from emulating the best elements of outside pathway providers”

If you are looking for a pathway partner, it is probably also true that you are looking for some kind of overarching structure to guide your international student management on campus.

You’re also not alone; in 2009, only two outside pathway partnerships existed in the US, while seven years later, there were 55*. Why such interest in partnering? Pathway Providers are most often selected by universities because they bring added value to a university’s international student lifecycle, from student recruiting to student support and career success.

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Cost-effective translation for international education

“Translation is, after all, at the core of the international education experience”

International education is all about teaching and learning across national and linguistic borders. How can institutions and teachers best overcome language barriers and communicate better with foreign languages audiences? 

We consider the different options available: working with professional translation agencies, working directly with translators via freelance networks, and “doing it yourself” with Artificial Intelligence-powered machine translation software. We will consider the pros and cons and relative costs of the various approaches along with best practices, tips and tricks for improving outcomes.

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How ‘Safety’ is moving up the agenda for international students & their families

“The pressure is on UK schools to make their schools as attractive as possible when it comes to projecting a ‘safe’ image”

Maryland lawmakers have approved a bill that will allow Johns Hopkins University to form its own, private police force to enforce the law on campus. Meanwhile, in the UK, over the past three years, universities have paid more than £2 million to 17 police forces in exchange for support.

Spending is rapidly increasing and the University of Northampton now has six fulltime police officers seconded to the University for 3 years, at a cost of £775,000. Safety is increasingly front of mind when students are deciding about overseas study locations. In IDP’s annual survey of almost 3,000 students in the five main overseas study destinations (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) Canada leads the way in terms of ‘safety’ versus its international rivals, with the UK ranking 4th out of five.

Also, students from China are now reported to be as concerned by the safety of the destination country in which they intend to study as they are the relative academic position of their institution, according to the latest report from the Beijing Overseas Study Service Association.

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The most important job in the world

“Collectively, we need to tackle the learning crisis for the one in two children being failed as they never even learn the basics”

Teaching is the most important job in the world. The quality of any nation’s education cannot exceed the quality of its educators. Each teacher has the opportunity to shape and impact tens of thousands of young lives over the course of their career. It is not unusual to hear someone reflect on a favourite teacher from their school days or to ascribe their success in life to the advice or guidance given by a teacher.

Yet, in many low and middle-income countries teaching is an extremely difficult profession. Once trained, teachers can find themselves teaching in a range of challenging situations; days away from the nearest town; with little or no support or guidance; textbooks that aren’t aligned to the material or the age of the children they are attempting to teach and overcrowded classrooms with children sitting on the floor.

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