International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
News and Views 
This News and Views page is my Blog.
I use it to:
This page shows the ten most recent blog articles. A complete list of all articles since the blog started in May 2014 can be found on the Blog Archive page.
Posted on 4 Feb 2026 at 18:17 by Vicky Lewis
There's a strong emphasis on transnational education (TNE) in the UK government International Education Strategy.
The term transnational education appears 16 times, and the abbreviation TNE 22 times.
So I thought I’d check where and how TNE features in recently published strategic plans of UK universities.
This is by no means a systematic study. I’ve simply picked on three, quite different institutions, whose recent publication of new strategic plans came to my attention:
So, what do they have to say (directly or indirectly) about TNE?
Posted on 29 Jan 2026 at 16:57 by Vicky Lewis
It’s always interesting to gain insights into how others see us. So I’ve picked out some commentary on the UK’s new International Education Strategy (IES) from outside our UK HE bubble.
Mervin Bakker, Executive Director at EAIE, used a LinkedIn post to highlight a lesson he felt other countries might learn from the UK. He praised the ‘integrated approach between different parts of the government and other stakeholders’ which has led to ‘a holistic strategy combining education, trade, development and diplomacy’. However, he agreed with me that extending involvement to the Home Office would have been even better!
Mervin also commented that ‘a better balance could have been struck between the challenges and opportunities for international education from the perspective of students and the local communities around HEIs’. Other commentators from within the UK (e.g. Diana Beech, Anne-Marie Graham, David Pilsbury, Ruth Arnold) have made similar observations about the importance of the international student voice and the need for universities to engage with their local communities as key stakeholders in their international endeavours.
Posted on 22 Jan 2026 at 10:38 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?
Posted on 8 Jan 2026 at 17:47 by Vicky Lewis
I’ve written and spoken before about the evolution of UK university international strategies over time.
In generalised terms, there was a shift from international strategies in the late 1990s (largely synonymous with international student recruitment) to internationalisation strategies in the late 2000s (more comprehensive, but still internally focused on making the institution ‘more international’) to global engagement strategies in the late 2010s (more outward-facing, with an emphasis on building responsible relationships and making a positive global impact).
I read a LinkedIn post recently which got me thinking about whether we (and, by ‘we’, I mean universities in economically advantaged countries where higher education institutions have reasonable levels of autonomy) should be paying far more attention to radical shifts in global demographics when devising our next wave of strategies. And not just our international strategies. Our overarching institutional strategies.
Posted on 23 Apr 2025 at 16:51 by Vicky Lewis
The twelve-part series of blogs I recently completed, exploring the international KPIs of UK universities, wasn’t supposed to be a blog series.
Here’s how it started.
Back in May 2024, I had a lull in consultancy projects. I’d stepped away from work for a month in April to sort out my late mum’s writings, letters and other mementos. And it took a while for new projects to start coming through again.
I decided to take the opportunity to get on with some research I’d been mulling over for a while. What started out as an analysis of the international KPIs in post-pandemic strategic plans turned into an exploration of UK universities’ international strategies and how success is measured at that, more detailed, level.
When I started out, I planned to turn this into a report for the sector (a follow up to my 2021 Global Strategies Report, but this time homing in on the specific topic of KPIs).
I did the analysis, worked out my report structure, and drafted a context-setting introduction (though a general election was called and the context seemed likely to change before I’d finished writing the report).
Then the consultancy work picked up again from June. I had less time and was struggling to focus on writing this new report alongside the consultancy.
Posted on 9 Apr 2025 at 16:55 by Vicky Lewis
This is the twelfth and, you'll be relieved to hear, final blog in my series sharing insights and emerging ideas on ways to measure international success, based on a review of university international strategies. Links to earlier blogs in the series are provided at the end of this one.
In this final blog, I review some of the constructive and insightful comments made when I’ve shared my KPI blogs on LinkedIn. It was truly gratifying that this series stimulated such lively debate and I appreciate that so many of you took the time to share your own observations.
I’m going to go through each of the thematic blogs in turn.
Posted on 2 Apr 2025 at 17:37 by Vicky Lewis
This is the eleventh in my series of blogs sharing insights and emerging ideas on ways to measure international success, based on a review of university international strategies. Links to earlier blogs in the series are provided at the end of this one.
I’d intended this to be a final, wrap-up blog to this series but I’m going to split the wrapping up over two blogs as there’s still a lot I’d like to say. And a 12-part series feels more complete than an 11-parter!
So, in this blog, I’ll flag up some missing metrics, then throw a spanner in the works by exploring the question of whether KPIs are even useful. Do we really need to measure everything?
Blog number 12 will provide an overview of key learning points from the series and some concluding observations.
Posted on 26 Mar 2025 at 18:16 by Vicky Lewis
This is the tenth in my series of blogs sharing insights and emerging ideas on ways to measure international success, based on a review of university international strategies. Links to earlier blogs in the series are provided at the end of this one.
Despite well-rehearsed reservations about the commercial global rankings, these are often used (by institutions and their stakeholders) as a measure of reputation and a marker of prestige.
I was amused to find out recently that the term ‘prestige’ used to be a synonym for ‘practising juggling or sleight of hand’, and is derived from a Latin adjective meaning ‘full of tricks’ or ‘deceitful’.
It can feel as if institutions are ‘practising sleight of hand’ when they focus on optimising specific metrics simply to climb the rankings; and the rankings agencies open themselves up to accusations of ‘deceit’ when they offer reputation-building consultancy to institutions with one hand, while compiling various rankings with the other.
This insightful piece in International Higher Education by Chris Glass and Gerardo Blanco investigates the worrying dynamics of what they describe as the ‘new analytics-industrial complex’, reflecting a transition on the part of companies like THE and QS from ‘rankings to regulatory power’.
Some institutions (e.g. Utrecht University) have publicly withdrawn from global rankings. Others are signing up to initiatives such as More Than Our Rank. Meanwhile, the rankings organisations have branched out into new, more specific rankings such as the THE Impact Rankings and QS Sustainability Rankings.
The former allows institutions to differentiate themselves by selecting their ‘priority SDGs’ – but still ends up with a global ranking.
The very notion that you can reliably rank institutions that have widely differing missions and contexts (apples, oranges and - in the illustration for this blog - a pineapple) is, when you think about it, ludicrous.
That doesn’t stop rankings being used by a whole host of stakeholders to inform decisions, including:
So, are rankings still a popular KPI in international strategies? And what other measures of global reputation are used?
Posted on 19 Mar 2025 at 17:20 by Vicky Lewis
This is the ninth in my series of blogs sharing insights and emerging ideas on ways to measure international success, based on a review of university international strategies. Links to earlier blogs in the series are provided at the end of this one.
In the UK, there’s a lot of focus on having a diverse body of students. Increasing weight is also placed on nurturing a global outlook among those students.
Less attention is paid to the diversity of the staff community and the role of the institution in tapping into - and further developing - the international perspectives, expertise and networks of staff. Despite the fact that these characteristics greatly enhance and enrich delivery of the core missions of teaching and research.
There’s a clear intersection with Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) goals and sometimes ‘shared’ KPIs feature in international strategies.
Posted on 12 Mar 2025 at 16:22 by Vicky Lewis
This is the eighth in my series of blogs sharing insights and emerging ideas on ways to measure international success, based on a review of university international strategies. Links to earlier blogs in the series are provided at the end of this one.
When I’ve been involved in developing institutional strategies for global engagement, the theme of internationalised research and knowledge exchange has often been challenging to integrate.
This is partly because there’s usually a core institutional strategy for research (which may already be in existence or may still be in development) and generally a dedicated PVC / VP (Research) with ownership of this area. And – certainly for research-intensive universities – there’s an assumption that world-leading, internationally oriented and collaborative research is ‘core business’. In some institutional cultures this can lead to a slightly territorial approach, questioning the need to mention this area in an international strategy.
I try to turn this around and show that it’s an opportunity to reinforce certain research (and knowledge exchange) priorities and to shine a spotlight on those actions that make a specific contribution to building global impact.
But when there is a clear research dimension in an international strategy, how does this translate into KPIs?
