An international education strategy lacking in ambition

It would be churlish to respond to the United Kingdom government’s new international education strategy – or more accurately its international educational exports strategy – with anything other than a fulsome welcome. It has been a long time coming. It is six years since the previous strategy. That is a lifetime in current British politics.

Since the last such official document back in 2013, we have had five ministers for universities, four secretaries of state for education, three types of government (a coalition, a majority administration and a minority administration), two elections and one referendum. We are in unusual times.

The new document is welcome not just because it has taken so long to arrive. It is also welcome because it includes hard new targets. There is a new goal of £35 billion (US$45.6 billion) in education exports by 2030 and another for 600,000 international higher education students in the UK by the same date.

Less ambitious than meets the eye

There are enormous educational, societal and financial benefits from hosting a large number of international students. Last year, we showed the net financial benefits to the UK from educating international students amount to more than £20 billion (US$26 billion) a year and are felt all over the country.

So official targets can usefully focus minds. If achieved, they could allow us to continue having a healthy share of an enormous – and growing – global opportunity.

But there is a big caveat. To the untutored eye, the targets may look mightily impressive. But, regrettably, they are less ambitious than they first appear.
The planned new trajectory for future growth in education exports is just half that assumed in the last government target, set in 2015. We used to aim for growth of £2 billion a year. The new target hopes for growth of only around half that level – and much less than in other countries.

Indeed, the new plans are, essentially, to aim for future growth that is only very slightly higher than in the recent past. That is unambitious and not enough to retain our position as the second most successful exporter of higher education in the world behind the United States.

Hard to deliver

Yet, if the Brexit shenanigans reduce demand to come and study here, the targets will still be very hard to deliver. Back in 2017, soon after the referendum, we commissioned some work that modelled the effect of ending European Union students’ entitlement to tuition fee loans and charging them full international fees.

The results suggested there could be a 57% drop in UK enrolments for students from other EU countries. While this could be partly offset by the effects of a falling pound, it means less diverse university campuses, boosting the very university monoculture that politicians profess to dislike.

Even if Brexit was not overshadowing everything, the 23 action points in the new strategy would be a damp squib and not up to the job. They are a mix of new, old and reannounced policies. So we are to have a new ‘International Education Champion’, continued support from the ‘Education is GREAT’ campaign and (slightly) better visa arrangements.

Like the target itself, these changes are better than nothing. But they are small tweaks when compared to the scale of the challenge in meeting our full potential. What is missing is a bold flagship policy that makes a really big difference while signalling to the rest of the world that we are moving up a gear or two.

There is no shortage of potential candidates. The government could, for example, have removed students from their overall target for reducing net inward migration. Or they could have improved our post-study work rules to bring them in line with those of our main competitors – when the post-study work rules were tightened up back in 2012, the number of people arriving from India to study in the UK fell off a cliff.

A few days after the new educational exports strategy appeared, we produced a new study with Kaplan International Pathways and London Economics which shows the small proportion of international students who arrived in the UK in 2016-17 and then remain here to work will contribute £3.2 billion in tax and National Insurance.

We also showed they are not taking jobs from British citizens, for they typically work in areas with shortages of high-level skills, such as IT or education. We additionally showed that the tightening up of post-study work has already cost the country £1 billion in foregone tax receipts. The only loser when the UK makes it harder for people to come and study here, and to work afterwards, is the UK.

Migration policy

Something else that is important is missing from the new strategy too: a true cross-government commitment to expanding educational exports. While the strategy was co-branded by the Department for International Trade and the Department for Education, migration policy is wholly owned by the Home Office.

I was the main political adviser to the minister for universities from 2010 to 2013 and saw close up that success relies on having sufficient commitment from every government department that can make a difference as well as a propitious external environment.

At that time, Australian politicians would sometimes thank us for reducing the warmth of the UK’s welcome to international students. It gave them the opportunity to seize a much greater market share by rolling out the red carpet while we were rolling ours up.

If we are to deliver, or as I hope, exceed the latest targets, then we must regard the new strategy as a launchpad to other bolder policies – or an early staging post rather than a final destination. Otherwise, the Australians and others keen to displace Britain as the second-biggest education exporter in the world will thank their lucky stars once again.

Nick Hillman is director of the United Kingdom’s Higher Education Policy Institute.

UNITED KINGDOM
Ministers launch new international education strategy