Four Key Takeaways from The UK’s International Education Strategy (2021 Update).

A few weeks have passed since the release of the UK’s latest International Education Strategy and, having taken the time to digest its content, here are (in my view) four key takeaways:

1. Higher Education Institutions are being challenged to diversify, but this will be easier said than done.

The government is acutely aware of the need to build sustainability into the international student recruitment agenda, and that a diverse market-base is key to achieving this.

A key message to institutions seems to be to work harder to diversify, and rely less on traditional powerhouse recruitment markets, such as China.

This, however, is far easier said than done.

In a post COVID world it’s likely that institutions, and international recruitment teams, will have less resources to allocate to student recruitment. In this landscape it’s going to be hard for institutions to place their limited resource chips on the global board in a way that will enable them to nurture speculative and emerging markets, rather than continuing to focus on high yielding markets such as China, India, Nigeria and Hong Kong.

Professor Sir Steve Smith has now identified five priority markets that represents key growth opportunities for the UK HE sector, specifically; India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Nigeria.

India, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria were, perhaps, obvious choices. All three markets currently yield good volumes of students, and could potentially be nurtured further to deliver growth.

Indonesia and Vietnam, however, seem far trickier propositions.

UNESCO Student Mobility Data suggests that Australia attracts four times the number of Indonesian students than the UK (which also sits behind the US, Malaysia and Japan as only the fifth largest recruiter of Indonesian students).

Similarly, the UK would be playing catch-up in Vietnam, as just the sixth most popular destination country for Vietnamese students behind Japan, US, Australia, Rep. Korea and France, with Japan and the US attracting 10 and seven times the volume of Vietnamese students as the UK respectively.

It will be very interesting to see just how the government plans to assist UK institutions in increasing market-share and footprint in both Indonesia and Vietnam, as well as some of the secondary markets specified in the report (such as Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and Pakistan).

2. Pathway provision could have a larger role to play than the report suggests.

The report references pathway provision in relation to diversification (stating that pathway providers can increase access to UK higher education and assist with transition to HE).

I think pathway provision can play a much deeper and wider role than this. The large pathway providers (Study Group, INTO, Navitas et al) have significant global reach and influence in the international student recruitment arena, far more than most universities can dream of. Pathway providers are very well placed to ‘move the dial’ in regards to UK international student recruitment, if they’re supported by the government in areas such as immigration, and if they receive similar in-country support that the DIT and British Council provide to Universities.

New pathway models are also sure to emerge over the next decade, such as online and blended provision of foundation years, feeding UK universities with a healthy stream of international students.

In short, I feel that pathway provision will play a larger role than the report suggests.

3. What does the future hold for UK TNE provision?

Little specific information was contained in the report in relation to supporting TNE, which is surprising given that UK TNE provision grew so rapidly and significantly between 2007/08 (c.197K students) and 2016/17 (c.709K students).

Student volumes have plateaued, or even tailed off a little, in recent years but revenues have continued to climb. The value of TNE as a sub-sector of HE was estimated to be ￡650m in the 2018/19 cycle.

In a post COVID world it’s highly possible that more students will choose to stay in their own country to study, certainly for the next two-to-three years, and TNE can play a major role in supporting the UK’s international agenda during this period.

The report references support provided to institutions in the shape of scoping missions, the creation of country guides and the running of partner-matching events (with the support of UUKi and British Council). In my view Universities will need more assistance in driving regulatory change on the international stage, as new models of TNE emerge, models that will require less travel and will be more sustainable (such as online and blended forms of TNE).

4. Relatively small growth targets suggest a period of consolidation.

By 2030 the ambition is to increase education exports to ￡35b per annum and to increase the number of international higher education students studying in the UK to 600,000 per annum.

Historic data suggests that the latter represents very little growth throughout the coming decade. In the 2019/20 cycle HESA data suggested that c.560,000 non-UK domiciled students studied at a UK HE provider. This represented an increase of 12% compared to the 2018/19 cycle. This step-change was driven mostly by an increase in students from India and China and, almost certainly, was as a direct result of the much-needed introduction of the post study work visa.

The ambition to add just 40,000 additional students to the tally by 2030 (or 2% growth year-on-year) seems to suggest that the UK HE sector will seek to preserve and protect its global market share, consolidating its position and diversifying its market-base in the wake of increased competition in the form of other HE export powerhouses (such as the US, Canada and Australia) as well as competition from international universities that continue to grow in stature and reputation, reducing the consumer’s desire (and perceived need) to travel overseas to obtain a high quality, globally recognised education.

Final Conclusions.

The report represents an excellent road-map for UK education, but what will be critical to its success is the operationalisation of its content, and the support that various entities and government departments will provide the sector in assisting operationalisation.

In my view there are three key elements to successful operationalisation of the plan:

1. Education must be in the minds of DIT and DfE when brokering international trade agreements in the coming years.
2. Application and immigration processes and procedures must be streamlined, and at least be on par with countries such as Canada and Australia.
3. Market and regulatory barriers need to be eroded to pave the way for the delivery of new models, especially in areas such pathway and TNE provision.

Hopefully the strategy will delivery on the tagline, support recovery and drive growth. Time will tell.