Typically, people in North America and Europe think about international student-mobility as either something which is internal to their geographic sphere (for example, circulation between Canada and the US, or within Europe through programs like Erasmus), or something in which students from outside Europe and North America (mostly Asia, a little bit from Africa and Latin America) move to our countries to attend university.

But for the last five years or so, maybe one of the biggest trends in global student mobility has been towards greater intra-Asian circulation of students.  So, let’s take a look at this phenomenon.

The number one student destination in Asia is the People’s Republic of China, which now hosts over four hundred thousand students every year (a 10x increase since 1999) and will shortly pass the UK to become the world’s number two destination country.  Most of the students going there are from Asia (about 15% are from Korea), and most of them are not going to study for an entire degree (the most common reason to go is for a 4-8 months stint in a language course).  The country’s goal is to reach half a million by the end of the decade, a figure it should easily attain (my bet would be over 600,000).

The number two destination in Asia is…Russia.  I know, I know, we usually think of Russia as a European country but there’s good reason to think of it as an Asian power too.  First because of geography and second because that’s where it gets most of its students (over a quarter-million a year).  The biggest source countries are the central Asian republics, which used to be bound to Russia through the Soviet Union and before that the Russian Empire – but it also picks up significant numbers from China and, curiously, Malaysia (briefly: public medical schools in Malaysia are tacitly reserved for ethnic Malays, the Chinese community has set up its own medical schools, and Malaysian Indian students end up going to cut-price Russian medical schools in places like Kursk).

Following close on Russia’s heels is Japan, also with roughly a quarter-million international students.  For a long time, Japan had stalled in its quest for more international students, mainly because they were really hoping they could attract students from other developed (read: Euro/North American) countries.  Having now accepted that Japan’s natural market is Asia and specifically China, numbers are skyrocketing, with double-digit (i.e. over 10%) increases each year.

Next on the list comes Malaysia.  To understand the Malaysian international student, you need to understand the country’s weird ethnic situation (public universities are for Malays/Bumiputras, other ethnic groups can found their own private institutions) which gives rise to a massive private HE sector which comprises over the half the system.  So while Malaysia has something like 170,000 students, mostly hailing either from China or from destinations around the Indian Ocean (lots of students from Iran, the Persian Gulf and East Africa, all of whom appreciate Malaysia as a destination which is Islamic but not particularly conservative) an awful lot of them are in private 2-year institutions rather than the country’s premier research institutions.

Coming up hard behind Malaysia is South Korea, which essentially had no foreign students fifteen years ago (too busy meeting the booming local demand!) and now has over 125,000 foreign students (oh, hey – demographic bust which suddenly leaves a mostly private university system scrambling to fill spots!). China and (oddly) Mongolia are the primary markets here.

Once you get past the big five, there are still a few countries with some heft.  Singapore had to back off its ambitious goals of attracting 150,000 international students when it became clear that it was affecting locals’ ability to attend the Island’s better schools and when some experiments in branch campuses didn’t go so well.  But with local student numbers dropping off, don’t be surprised if that goal re-emerges.  Taiwan faces similar demographic pressures and its universities are looking overseas as well (though hopes from the turn of the decade that some of those international students might come from the mainland have definitely gone).  And then of course there are the Gulf nations with their weird offshore education Free-Trade Zones (which I think are going to increase in importance over time, provided there is some political stability in the area).  Dubai, in particular, has something like fifty international universities operating there and will remain one of the world’s most important laboratories for transnational education.

The main takeaway here?  It’s complacent to think of Asia just as a source of international students.  It’s also a competitor for international students.  Knowing its appeal and its student flows are important to developing your own institution’s value proposition and approach in Asia.