‘Reinventing international higher education for a socially just, sustainable world’ (N. Healey)

I had been playing around with how to structure this blog when I came across Professor Nigel Healey’s recent presentation to the APAIE conference. He proposes three reasons why the current business model for international higher education needs to change:

• Environmental cost
• Negative impact on source countries
• Neo-colonialism

He then goes on to look at how these negative impacts can be addressed:

• Maximise the return on the unavoidable carbon footprint
• Make access a global, not a national objective
• Seek parity of esteem / benefit in global partnerships

Finally, he highlights some approaches being adopted in each area by his own institution, the University of Limerick in Ireland.

In the rest of this blog, I use two of Nigel’s ‘reasons to change’ (I’ve left environmental cost aside for the time being) as a prompt to explore what this might mean in practice for ethical international engagement in key activity areas.  

Reviewing business models: international student recruitment

As Wei Liu observes in his recent article on Advocating for an Ethical Shift in International Higher Education: ‘In the context of reduced government funding, universities in the Global North may not be able to halt international recruitment or stop charging international tuition, but a balance needs to be pursued between economic gain and social responsibility.’

In particular, as Nigel Healey observes, we need to minimise any potential negative impact on source countries, including both excessive brain drain and the perpetuation (even exacerbation) of the gulf between rich and poor in those countries.

When I have worked with universities in higher education systems where fee income is not a primary driver of international student recruitment (e.g. Germany), the conversations have been refreshingly different from those that take place in the UK. The focus is often on widening access, broadening opportunities and making a positive social impact over the long term.

While UK universities cannot escape their national funding and operating context, they can review their business models. For example, they could reinvest a proportion of the income from what, for many institutions, has been a recent boom in international student enrolments into initiatives that address global inequalities.

We know that, in the UK, international student fees already cross-subsidise research activity. Could an explicit link be made with the funding of research projects that address (in a collaborative manner) challenges that affect the home countries of some of those students?

The idea of investing in widening access to domestic students from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds – and introducing measures which optimise retention and successful outcomes for these students – is now well embedded within UK HEIs. In recent years, the work done by institutions to welcome and support refugees and asylum-seekers, with many becoming Universities of Sanctuary, has also accelerated.

A natural extension of the widening access principle is to fund scholarships for those international students for whom an international education would be most transformative – both on an individual level and in terms of the impact that their education as a new leader in a particular field could have on their home country.

Why not go further and invest in employability support that extends to those international students returning home to build their careers?

Reviewing principles and processes: international partnerships

International partnerships are high on the agenda for most UK universities. The motivations behind partnerships are varied, with some more transactional and others more transformational. In both cases, we need to be aware of neo-colonialist approaches which perpetuate structural inequality and force Northern models and values onto Southern countries and institutions.

While most UK universities have well-established policies and approval processes for international partnerships, not all of these include full consideration of the ethical dimension. There tends to be more emphasis on not having a negative impact (‘do no harm’) and less on actively having a positive impact (‘make the world a better place’, which is a well-worn ambition in many a university vision statement).

Table 1 proposes a framework for considering the ethical principles underpinning international partnerships from different perspectives. 

Table 1: Ethical international partnership principles framework

© Vicky Lewis Consulting

At a basic level, operating ethically is about safeguarding institutional reputation by not working with organisations that have exploitative labour practices, damaging environmental practices, derive income from controversial sources or where the relationship risks compromising your academic freedom or EDI commitments.

On a more mature and socially responsible level, it’s about ensuring equitable approaches to partnership, which recognise the value of reciprocity in relationships, learning from one another, and fairly distributed responsibilities and funding (in Nigel Healey’s words: ‘parity of esteem and benefit’).

There are plenty of instances of UK universities acting as ‘good global citizens’ in their partnership work. Recent examples of this can be seen in the UK-Ukraine Twinning Initiative. The University of Glasgow’s academic partnership with the University of the West Indies came about as part of Glasgow’s programme of reparative justice, following research into how the University benefited from slavery-related wealth.    

Universities that seek to be ‘actively ethical’ could review their guiding principles for international partnerships using the above framework. Having done this, it’s important to ensure that the agreed principles are reflected in relevant policies; that they are applied in partnership approval processes; and that appropriate context, training and tools are provided to equip all staff to act with these principles in mind.

Reviewing international operations

An institution’s infrastructure and operating models for international recruitment and business development also merit being reviewed through an ethical lens. To what extent are they perpetuating colonialist (and carbon-heavy) approaches, with UK-based staff swooping into a country to ‘do business’ then returning to UK HQ and directing operations from afar? How effectively is local, in-country expertise recognised? How proactively are colleagues and contacts from the Global South invited to challenge Northern operating models which we might (potentially unwittingly) be imposing?

Over recent years, UK universities have entered into many more third-party partnerships with private sector organisations (particularly when it comes to international student recruitment). Are we confident in their own ethical standards? What are our expectations of them, their supply chain and the ways they plough profits back into supporting international communities?

Conclusion

This blog covers just a few practical aspects of ethical internationalisation (with a particular focus on changes that can be made in the UK HE context):

• Consider ways to invest some of the income from international student fees to help address global inequalities.
• Review principles, policies and processes for international partnerships.
• Question your assumptions about your own infrastructure for international operations.

Other suggested changes in approach can be found in many of the thought-provoking articles which appear in University World News. This 2022 piece, Global higher education finds itself at a crossroads, by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, concludes with a helpful twelve-point list of recommendations for ethical internationalisation.

Tags/Keywords

ETHICS INTERNATIONAL STUDENT RECRUITMENT INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS SOCIAL IMPACT

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