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 30 Sep 2026 at 18:18 by Vicky Lewis
Regular readers with long memories may recall that, way back in June, I wrote two blogs which explored what it means to place students at the heart of internationalisation strategy, and offered some recommendations for anyone seeking to put this into practice.
At the end of the second, I invited feedback and suggested I might develop some of the themes from the commentary into a third blog.
It’s taken a while, but here it is.
The comments on both blogs were thoughtful and constructive. Rather than simply reinforcing the original arguments, they challenged and extended them – and highlighted some interesting tensions.
Here are four that particularly struck me.
Posted on 17 Sep 2026 at 12:15 by Vicky Lewis
It was a real pleasure to be part of the 2026 EAIE conference in Glasgow last week. The conference sessions I attended were all excellent, with some key themes running through them:
This blog draws particularly on the sessions below, while also reflecting on strands of thinking woven through other sessions and my conversations with colleagues:
Posted on 25 Aug 2026 at 17:22 by Vicky Lewis
Today I read a Times Higher Education article which sets out the risks of ‘islands of internationalisation’ developing as central Asian hubs grow.
The focus of the article is on Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but the implications are wider.
Here’s how it starts:
‘Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have been warned that bringing in foreign universities does not always strengthen a region’s wider education system as both countries continue to expand their international partnerships.’
This reminds me of the oft-repeated assertion that simply recruiting international students does not automatically internationalise the institution, strengthen its educational offer, or enhance the experience of the student body as a whole. Purposeful work is needed to support their full integration into the institution and community, and to ensure curricula are designed so that the presence of international students enriches the global learning and cross-cultural experiences of all.
Similarly, the mere presence of international universities in a country that hosts TNE does not in itself strengthen the national education system or improve the quality of provision.
The host country needs to be deliberate and intentional about the way it integrates international partnerships into its higher education system.
Posted on 29 Jun 2026 at 14:30 by Vicky Lewis
This is the second of two blogs drawing on my recent presentation at the Irish Association for International Education conference in Limerick on 11 June 2026.
In Part 1, I propose three distinctive characteristics of a student-centred internationalisation strategy.
Each requires the flipping of a university’s traditional strategic emphasis:
This second blog sets out some recommendations for anyone seeking to drive or support development of an internationalisation strategy which places students at its heart.
Posted on 16 Jun 2026 at 14:41 by Vicky Lewis
This is the first of two blogs drawing on my recent presentation at the Irish Association for International Education conference in Limerick on 11 June 2026.
Part 1 explores what’s distinctive about a student-centred strategy for internationalisation.
Part 2 will set out some recommendations for anyone seeking to support development of an internationalisation strategy which places students at its heart.
It’s easy for a university – or even a country – to say that it’s placing students at the heart of its internationalisation strategy, but much harder to go beyond the noble words and do this in practice.
Building on research undertaken for my chapter in a forthcoming Routledge book on student-centred internationalisation (edited by Professor Elspeth Jones and Dr Ravi Ammigan), coupled with insights from my own professional experience, these two blogs explore how a student-centred approach alters ways of:
To challenge my Anglo-Western assumptions, the underpinning research involved tapping into the perspectives and experiences of expert practitioners and researcher-practitioners from around the world (six different continents) via a survey to understand what a student-centred internationalisation strategy would look like in their context.
Posted on 9 Apr 2026 at 12:41 by Vicky Lewis
Last month (3 March 2026 to be precise), I did a spot check of Professional / Managerial / Support Service jobs posted on the jobs.ac.uk website in the category 'International Activities'.
What struck me was how much more variety there is now than a few years ago.
There are some fascinating roles with a strong international dimension that sit outside International Offices, suggesting more effective institution-wide internationalisation.
And the recurring priorities across this little snapshot of job postings provide a useful window on what is currently preoccupying UK higher education institutions.
This blog offers a thematic commentary on what the job ads (and job descriptions) are telling us.
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.
