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.

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Can the recruitment of pupils for UK boarding schools ever be 100% online?

“Marketing budgets, once heavily weighted to foreign travel for recruitment purposes, are now shifting to google ads, Instagram and Facebook”

Covid-19 has heralded a shift to an online world which has implications for every aspect of boarding school operations, writes Pat Moores, director and co-founder of UK Education Guide. Clearly, the most obvious impact has been on teaching, shifting almost overnight to Microsoft teams and other online learning platforms.

However, the impact is also being felt in pupil recruitment. The days when agents and schools met in large conference spaces to talk to each other and make agent agreements has also shifted online.

So how far can algorithms and automated online applications processes ever replace traditional Agents, school admissions teams and a school tour?

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Why the unis who win intl students will be those with provable graduate outcomes

“81% of international students see buying an international education as an investment”

This year has been an incredible year of disruption for international education, writes Shane Dillon, found of Cturtle and UniAdvisor. It has rapidly brought to the forefront conversations around education delivery and the value of tertiary education in general in the 21st century.

As of March 2020, the global movement of international students has vanished and the future of the sector, the countries and university brands involved are in a state of flux.

Now more then ever before it is critical for the sector to embrace data on international graduate employment outcomes to illustrate clearly to consumers the value and return on investment an international education delivers. Numerous studies from UNICEF, QS and Cturtle show clearly that employability is the most important consideration impacting student choice across Asia.

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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.

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Upskilling the international graduate talent market for a post-pandemic future

“Overseas talent has always been well-primed to help fill skills gaps in high-growth sectors like digital and technology”

Earlier this month, the UK government released further details on its new points-based immigration system, part of which hopes to provide international students the opportunity to live and work in the UK for a further two to three years after they graduate, writes Justin Cooke, chief content and partnerships officer at FutureLearn.

Similarly, in Australia, the government has announced it will recommence granting student visas among other measures to help support international student’s career pathways in the country. 

Unlocking the potential in highly skilled international student talent has become a greater priority for both industry and government over the years, more urgently so since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Throughout the pandemic, larger businesses especially have continued relying on the international graduate market according to recent insights, demonstrating the huge value of this talent pool.

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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.

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Covid-19 an opportunity to truly internationalise Western education

“Little progress has been made in embedding non-Western ideologies and philosophies in current teaching”

There are currently more than 5.3 million international students furthering their education outside their home countries, writes Thanh Pham of Monash University.

The majority of which are non-Western students studying in Western countries. There have been growing calls for the need to support international students in Western countries, including providing financial aid, creating safe environments, and respecting cultural diversity.

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Why virtual exchange is more important than ever

“Virtual exchange, when done correctly, can be an extremely enriching, engaging and rewarding experience”

Suddenly we find ourselves at a crossroads in higher education, writes Matthew Hightower, CEO and founder of Class2Class. Many educators worldwide don’t know which way to turn. We cannot exactly go back in the direction from which we came, but taking the path less traveled into the unknown can be equally as daunting.

As educators we have to ask ourselves: Isn’t one of our primary goals to foster the development of 21st century skill sets within our students? If our answer to that question is an emphatic “yes”, then shouldn’t we be encouraging open-mindedness and risk-taking from ourselves as well as from our students as we reimagine what higher education could and should look like?

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Predicting remote learning trends after Covid-19

“At least half of students will want to return to our campuses and physically be amongst people.”

In this week’s blog, CEO and founder of Wild Code School Anna Stepanoff discusses what remote learning trends will become the norm following the pandemic, where the classroom will still be important, and how supporting women into tech remains a key goal for the organisation.

Following this pandemic, remote learning will undoubtedly become more important. However, I strongly feel that remote learning will not replace traditional face-to-face learning in the long term.

There are three forms of learning: fully-autonomous online learning, where a student essentially teaches themselves using online information and resources and requires no interaction or support; remote learning, where students do not attend a physical classroom, but instead learn in a virtual environment with the support of fellow students and educators; and traditional class-based learning.

The pandemic has meant that Wild Code School’s 20 plus European campuses have necessarily adapted from a mixture of remote and traditional learning to being fully remote.

When educational establishments are able to re-open their campuses (in our case October), at least half of students will want to return to our campuses and physically be amongst people.

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Translation is the key to success when it comes to international students

“Streamlined digital e-learning programs available in the native language of the user are proven to be significantly more effective in increasing engagement”

Pre-pandemic, there were reports that the global online education market would reach a value of $350bn by 2025, writes The Translation People‘s Alan White.

With 1.38bn students affected by the forced closure of schools, colleges and universities around the world, some online learning providers are reporting a 200% increase in usage in their platforms since March.

Earlier this month, Uganda’s First Lady and education minister Janet Museveni instructed the country’s universities to start online teaching if they hadn’t already done so.

“No continuing learner should be left behind or excluded” because of their Covid-19 response, she said.

For the 16,000 international students who come to Uganda each year, this move provided a level of accessibility to education that risked being compromised the longer lockdown continued.

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