By John O'Leary, QS Academic Advisory Board
Many commentators predicted that international student mobility would fall as a result of the global recession, but the reverse may be true.
Not only has the recovery been relatively swift in the Asian economies that fund many of the world’s international students, but restrictions on university enrolments in the West may encourage more students there to look beyond their own country for higher education.
In the UK, for example, up to 200,000 aspiring students will miss out on a place this summer. Applications to full-time degree courses are up by 50 per cent at some universities – and by 23 per cent on average. But the Government has placed limits on the number of UK and European Union undergraduates that the universities can take and threatened to fine those who enrol too many. Even after the promise of extra places in March’s Budget, there will be room for only 14,000 more students from 106,000 additional applicants.
The restrictions do not apply to students from outside the EU, so an already strong incentive to recruit international students (who pay much higher fees) will be even stronger this year. There are 16,000 more overseas applicants for degree courses than at this time last year. The additional numbers from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the US and Malaysia will be welcomed with open arms by admissions officers, as long as they meet the universities’ entry criteria.
Traditionally, students from the UK have been reluctant to go abroad for higher education, even on exchange scheme of only a few months’ duration. But that has started to change in recent years, especially at postgraduate level, as more have been convinced of the potential value of international experience in the labour market. The leading American universities have been active recruiters and surprisingly large numbers have left the UK for Australia, as well as for European business schools. The signs are that this trend will gather pace as it becomes more difficult to win a place at a local university.
The squeeze on domestic applicants is by no means confined to the UK; Ireland is another country experiencing similar pressures. More than 70,000 young people have applied for 45,000 university and college places there, encouraging thousands to consider higher education outside their home country. Over 7,000 have applied to universities in the UK - 50 per cent more than last year - with nursing, medicine and teacher training all showing big increases.
Irish students are also applying in significant numbers to universities in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, as well as to the more traditional destination of the US. It has been reported that 40 of the 120 places to study veterinary medicine at Hungarian universities last year went to Irish applicants, with more on the way this year.
Even the US is affected. Several of the leading American private universities have announced smaller graduate intakes and many state universities are also having to cut back on their undergraduate entry.
Harvard is reducing the number of graduate places in the arts and sciences, while the University of Chicago expects PhD recruitment to be down by as much as a third in the humanities. Yale is cutting graduate admissions by at least 10 per cent. Graduate students often receive full financial support and even wealthy universities are wary of the costs following serious falls in their endowments during the recession.
As in the UK, the pressure on places has not dimmed US universities’ appetite for international students. After a period of decline as a result of tighter visa restrictions following the September 11 attacks in 2001, numbers have been rising sharply, and President Obama is calling for more. Particularly at hard-pressed state universities, where the fee differential between in-state students and those from farther afield is often larger than in the Ivy League, the incentive to recruit internationally has never been as great.
Around the world, the number of students taking courses outside their home country has now passed 3 million. There has been no drop in recruitment in the main host countries – the US, UK, Australia, Germany and France – but other nations, such as China and Japan, have invested in facilities and courses specifically designed to appeal to the international market. As a result, more Asian students are remaining in their own region and competition is becoming truly global.
In such circumstances, the demand for global rankings and other international comparisons is bound to grow. More than 7 million people visited QS websites last year and it will be no surprise if that total is bettered in 2010.
