International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
International Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
UK universities’ international KPIs – PART 6 Posted on by Vicky Lewis
This is the sixth 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.
Following my blogs on KPIs relating to TNE and international student recruitment, this one explores success measures associated with a theme that appears to be growing in prominence in UK university international strategies: international and intercultural experiences and exposure.
It’s a bit of a mouthful but I wanted to broaden this out from ‘just’ international experiences, which may be interpreted by some as applying only to the minority of students who undertake some form of global mobility. The term ‘exposure’ embraces Internationalisation of the Curriculum and Internationalisation at Home, recognising that these have the potential to reach all students. And the term ‘intercultural’ acknowledges the beneficial impact of drawing on local experiences of cultural diversity. The frame of reference does not always need to be international.
The timing of this blog in the same week as Universities UK International’s 2025 Global Mobility conference is fortuitous. Among other things, this event explored the impact of global mobility and ways to measure this (for more takeaways, see my post-conference LinkedIn post).
Complementing this event, a highly relevant online conference is coming up in late April. The Global and Lifelong Learning team at the University of Kent is organising Innovations in Internationalisation at Home: Show us your Impact.
This consistent emphasis on impact begs the question: how do we measure success?
An analysis of the KPIs of six published international strategies with an end date between 2024 and 2030 shows that all six include KPIs relating to international and intercultural experiences and exposure. Between them, they list eight such KPIs. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s the only KPI category featured in all six institutions’ strategies. Although it’s a tiny sample, this is encouraging since this strand of international activity has traditionally been a bit of an afterthought or ‘poor relation’ in UK university strategies.
Four of the KPIs relate to number or proportion of students participating in outbound mobility or virtual international experiences. These KPIs include:
It’s interesting to see the wide range of targets when it comes to percentage participating (though there are differing definitions of ‘what counts’, varying according to type of activity, length of mobility and whether virtual experiences are included).
Two strategies measure success in terms of the number of institutions partnered with for student mobility purposes. An example KPI is:
One university takes a different approach and measures success in terms of the offer to students, with the following two KPIs:
This signifies a strong commitment to overhauling the curriculum to ensure an international dimension and international opportunities across the board. It’s unclear whether this is at all levels of study. And, of course, it does not guarantee take-up of the international experience on offer, but it sends an important message.
Looking at these KPIs as a whole, it is noticeable that they are mostly measures of input, rather than outcomes or impact.
Going back to the batch of strategies I reviewed in 2020, we can find a broader set of KPIs.
Some were quite specific. For example, offering all undergraduate and taught postgraduate students a scholarly, professional or service international experience, with a target take-up rate of 80%.
When it came to global mobility, several placed an emphasis on widening participation, aiming for improved participation by students who are disadvantaged or underrepresented.
There were also many more KPIs linked to an international curriculum and associated activities. These included having global citizenship attributes embedded across modules. One even mentioned giving all undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in ‘language and/or intercultural study’. This is unusual since language-learning is mentioned only rarely in UK international strategies.
Beyond this, there were success measures linked to global citizenship awards, joint projects and collaborative activities with students from other countries, and cross-cultural pedagogical initiatives.
I’ve only seen one international strategy which uses the impact of global mobility on graduate employability and progression as a success measure.
However, this was a recurring theme at the February 2025 UUKi conference, with a particular focus on the transformative impact for disadvantaged and underrepresented students. Increasing numbers of institutions are seeking to evaluate success in those terms. And some are creating a structured ecosystem of opportunities, starting off with small-scale, accessible intercultural engagement and building towards physical mobility.
Shifting the focus – at least partially – from input measures (number/proportion of students doing X,Y,Z) to the impact of the activities undertaken would open up opportunities for innovation.
It strikes me that there is too little joining up of ambitions for international and intercultural experience and exposure with core institutional goals. As a result, it can come across as a fringe activity that is pursued ‘for its own sake’ rather than reflecting the contribution it can make to a university’s other priorities.
For example, the latest UUKi Gone International research (report launch in March 2025) shows that global mobility can mitigate disadvantage. The academic and employment outcomes of disadvantaged students who have undertaken mobility are often better than those of their advantaged peers who were ‘non-mobile’. So, there is an important intersection with widening participation objectives.
If there is an institutional ambition to build sustainable TNE operations, integrating engagement activities (from Collaborative Online International Learning or joint projects through to physical exchange) between UK-based and in-country students can play a powerful role in strengthening partnerships, as well as enhancing the learning of both sets of students (and the staff teaching them).
If civic engagement is a priority, projects involving local diaspora communities are not just about providing students with intercultural exposure. They can also help to demystify the university and embed it better in its local community.
There are many more such intersections and I haven’t yet thought through how they could best be reflected in KPIs. However, I suspect there would be benefits in terms of focus and distinctiveness (not to mention institutional buy-in and commitment) if KPIs in this area could be more explicitly linked to other institutional priorities.
I’d welcome any thoughts on this.
In my next blog, I’m going to share insights into KPIs associated with ‘international student experience, success and alumni engagement’ (a potentially very broad category), which comes in as the fourth most popular measure of international success in recent international strategies.
Part 1 – What sits below the top of the iceberg?
Part 2 – Characteristics and key themes
Part 3 – Good KPIs, traps and tips
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE INTERCULTURAL EXPOSURE WIDENING PARTICIPATION KPIS INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY
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