Category: Internationalization

“Xenophobia”

Here’s a new one: the Canadian Federation of Students has decided, apparently, that charging international students higher tuition fees is “xenophobic”.  No, really, they have.  This is possibly the dumbest idea in Canadian higher education since the one about OSAP “profiting” from students.   But as we’ve seen all too often in the past year or two, stupidity is no barrier to popularity where political ideas are concerned.  So: let’s get down to debunking this. The point that CFS – and

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Post-Brexit Options

One highly amusing by-product of the frantic Canada-EU-Walloon trade negotiation finale last fall was watching the UK government suddenly realize that negotiating agreements with a 27-country trade bloc is actually really difficult and that this Brexit thing is almost certainly not going to end well.  Which of course has some reasonably significant implications for UK universities.  But how exposed are UK universities to Brexit? Arguably, the bigger post-Brexit implications have to do with staff who may be denied residency, future

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More on International Fees in Canadian Universities

Due to a few unexpected issues yesterday, we had to postpone the One Thought. With no further ado, here it is: The day before yesterday we looked at what universities in different parts of the country are charging in terms of international tuition fees.  Here’s a quick graph to refresh your memory: Figure 1: International Undergraduate Tuition Fees, by Province, Canada, 2016-17 Figure 2 shows the same data but with a different Y axis.  Instead of showing the figure in dollars, let’s

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Alarm Bells in China

So, in the midst of all the handwringing about the world’s major higher education student destinations all losing their damn minds (Trump, Brexit) and the implications this has for higher education internationalization, I think we’re in serious danger of missing a much bigger story going on in China. Don’t get me wrong.  Trump and Brexit are big stories, but on a global scale what they are going to do is shift mobility patterns a bit.  The precise English language destination countries

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Who’s More International?

We sometimes think about international higher education as being “a market”. This is not quite true: it’s actually several markets. Back in the day, international education was mostly about graduate students; specifically, at the doctoral level. Students did their “basic” education at home and then went abroad to get research experience or simply emigrate and become part of the host country’s scientific structure. Nobody sought these students for their money; to the contrary these students were usually getting paid in some

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