International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
New UK International Education Strategy Posted on by Vicky Lewis
My first read-through of the new UK International Education Strategy (IES) was on Tuesday morning, while listening to radio reports about social media posts spouted by President Trump overnight and calculated to whip up friction with other countries.
So it seemed apt that the term ‘geopolitical tensions’ features in the very first line of the strategy’s Ministerial Foreword. And it reminded me just how much the world has changed since the UK’s last IES was published in 2019.
It’s a huge relief not to be in limbo any more. The new strategy has finally landed, following a ‘review’ that has lasted since October 2024. And there are some positive ideas and themes. But it also includes its own internal tensions.
So, what does the IES say and how should we interpret it?
The new IES is built around three core ambitions:
In reality, they are two ambitions (1 and 2) underpinning a target (3). The content under ambition 3 is mainly about the tools and mechanisms that will help the sector to achieve the target (the ‘how’), while the content under ambitions 1 and 2 is more focused on what the government has chosen to prioritise.
As a reminder, the 2019 IES also had three objectives/ambitions (linked to a financial target, and an international higher education student numbers target). These were supported by five key, cross-cutting actions and 23 specific actions, coupled with a commitment to annual progress updates.
At first sight, the 2026 strategy appears to have dropped the explicit action points and progress updates, dropped the international enrolments target, and upped the financial (export income) target.
Most of the content under the three ambitions falls into one of the following categories:
If you strip out all the present tense ‘we are’ statements in the text and retain only the future-facing ‘we will’ commitments, you get a clearer picture of what's new.
I don’t mean to sound over-critical. Most strategies need a mix of ‘where we are now’ and ‘where we’re going’. And there’s some compelling and refreshing narrative in the IES which implies an understanding of the interconnected nature of different aspects of international education (e.g. the role of alumni in ‘soft power’, and the importance of equipping UK youth with ‘the confidence and skills needed to thrive in a globalised world’.
But what about the headline content?
Media commentary has majored on the centrality of transnational education (TNE) within the IES. This tends to be positioned as a switch of emphasis away from recruiting international students to the UK.
The Guardian’s headline is fairly typical:
UK ministers scrap foreign students target in shift to overseas hubs strategy
‘Government replaces recruitment goal with plan to increase ‘education exports’ to £40bn a year by 2030.’
The same Guardian article quotes the president of the UK’s National Union of Students saying that students want to ‘learn alongside our [international] peers rather than being on different continents’.
The implication is that it’s case of either TNE or recruitment. This is unhelpful and several colleagues have taken to LinkedIn to remind people that it’s possible (and desirable) to do both, and that the IES retains a strong ambition for sustainable international recruitment.
Some of the content in the IES shows an understanding that these different facets of international engagement can be interlinked and mutually supportive.
However, you don’t need advanced between-the-line-reading skills to see that the government is being swayed by Reform-influenced immigration concerns to downplay the emphasis on international student recruitment to the UK.
It’s pretty explicit on p.51:
‘Our target of £40 billion is ambitious and reflects the significant growth opportunities in areas beyond international student recruitment’.
As Research Professional put it, the government has managed to suggest that ‘the strategy will bring in lots of money to the UK while keeping many of the students making this contribution firmly in their own countries’.
The narrative of the IES conveys a commitment to sustainable recruitment that prioritises ‘well-managed and responsible recruitment, a high-quality student experience, and world-class outcomes for graduates’, with a view to building a resilient, diverse, long-term pipeline of international talent.
However, in the very next section, it references (repeatedly) the need for the UK’s offer to be aligned with wider immigration priorities, suggesting that the Home Office tail may continue to wag the IES dog.
As Nick Hillman points out in his HEPI blog, ‘sustainable’ may just be a euphemism for ‘reduced’.
The IES announces with some fanfare that the strategy is ‘a joint commitment across government… co-owned by the Department for Education, the Department for Business and Trade, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’. It’s certainly a positive step forward to have the FCDO on board - and to see that a prominent role is envisaged for the beleaguered British Council.
However, it is a great pity that the Home Office remains outside the tent.
As noted above, TNE is expected (alongside EdTech) to play a major role in meeting the export target. This is juxtaposed with warm words about widening access and opening up opportunities to less privileged students in their own countries. In simplistic terms, TNE is positioned as the international WP arm of UK HE, while UK-based study remains the preserve of wealthier international students. So there’s a tension (also played out at institutional level) between the idea that TNE endeavours are embarked on to widen access, and the ambition that they’re going to generate significant income.
TNE is also positioned as a way of hedging against international recruitment risks (e.g. another pandemic preventing travel, or actions such as the UAE’s recent decision not to fund scholarships to the UK). At the same time, TNE operations are subject to their own risks (e.g. vulnerability to geopolitical tensions and local conditions; maintaining quality).
TNE is not the right answer for every university. Individual institutions – and the UK as a whole – need to go into it with their eyes open. Not as a knee-jerk reaction to try to fill a gap in international fee revenue.
I realise this post has turned into a critique of the IES.
I don’t underestimate the efforts that have gone into formulating the strategy and ensuring that it takes as broad a view as possible within the current context – and I’d like to thank all those who played a role in this. There is a lot to celebrate, as illustrated by the case studies in the strategy which show how far UK international education has come in recent years.
My main reservation is that, whether it seeks to do so or not, the IES may come across as pitting TNE against recruitment to the UK.
A secondary reservation is that, while much of the rhetoric is convincing, new commitments to specific actions whose impact can be measured are on the light side. However, this may well be rectified via the action plans that members of the new Education Sector Action Group are expected to publish within 100 days of their appointment to the group.
I’ve got lots more I could say but this is already long enough, so I’ll save it for another post.
In the meantime, I’m truly grateful that, unlike our US sector colleagues, we have a coherent national strategy for international education and are not operating in a climate of fear.
|
|
