One of the significant challenges in analyzing policies around international student mobility is that there are multiple competing logics at work within the field.  However, the tensions between these competing logics are often not acknowledged, which makes it difficult to understand how to make choices between them. Today, we will look at four logics concerning in-bound student mobility, in order to disentangle them and promote sensible policy analysis.

The first logic of internationalization is what I call the pilgrimage logic: the tendency of young scholars to assemble in a few spots because that’s just “the thing to do” when only a few places offer particular degrees or experiences.  This logic drove international mobility from the medieval period into the late nineteenth century (the tendency of American scholars to spend time in Germany in order to obtain newfangled credentials called “doctorates” is a late example).  It is mostly obsolete now, but you can still see echoes of it  in South Africa (which, in the absence of local competitors, “naturally” attracts scholars from the southern half of the continent), and in the way a certain class of Latin American youth “naturally” do at least one degree in a prestigious east coast American university.

The pilgrimage logic – which mostly preceded any government policy in this area – spawned two other logics that were very important throughout the 20^th century.  The first was what can be called Soft Power internationalization: the notion that it was good to have students come to your country because of the mutual bonds it would forge.  From the pilgrimage era, this was most obvious in the way students from the British settler dominions flocked to Oxford, Cambridge and the Scottish universities, and it continues to this day to some degree for French universities and students from their former African colonies and Russian universities vis-à-vis Central Asia.  In the United States, Fulbright scholarships stem from this same impulse, as do Colombo scholarships in Australia. 

But the biggest expression of this line of Soft Power is Europe’s Erasmus program, designed specifically to help generate a pan-European identity (which itself is a form of soft-power, albeit not of the national variety).  Over the past 30 years it has helped nearly 4 million students study in another European country, and one recent study suggested that as many as one million babies across the continent have sprung from relationships that began when one or both partners were on an Erasmus term.

Alongside this Soft Power logic is another, more nakedly competitive one: the War for Talent logic.  Here, the main goal of international student mobility is to act as a talent magnet.  This really got going during the post-war period as scholars from around the world flocked to American research universities, which were globally pre-eminent.  University research enterprises ran (and still run) on the sweat of young foreign graduate students, many of whom stayed in the United States and helped the country extend its scientific lead over other countries.  Many other countries – particularly in Europe and the anglosphere – have tried to copy this formula, with varying measures of success and sometimes targeting immigration more broadly and not just top-level doctoral talent. 

Now one thing the Soft Power and War for Talent logics have in common is that they are both “not-for-profit” exercises.  Host countries or universities pay good money to attract students, and while they expect a long-term return on that investment, it doesn’t come in the form of direct payments from the students.  And this is directly contrary to the fourth and currently dominant logic of internationalization, which is what I call “Pecuniary Interest Internationalization”.  Quite simply: under the right circumstances, international students can generate a lot of revenue, and given rising per-student costs and stagnant or declining per-student public expenditure in higher education, the money these students generate are key to maintaining institutional budgets and prestige.

Pecuniary Interest Internationalization started in the UK in the 1980s, when the Thatcher government permitted cash-strapped universities to start charging international students for their services.  It took a big step forward about 20 years ago in Australia when the Howard government actively encouraged Australian universities to look abroad if they wanted extra cash.  Gradually, this logic took over in countries like New Zealand, Canada, and Malaysia.  In the United States, where the pecuniary logic was always in play with respect to out-of-state students at public universities, this policy did not really catch on until universities there realized that the out-of-state market was not going to grow any further and that more gains depended on looking elsewhere.  For many of the larger schools, this happened right around the 2008 recession, at least where undergraduates are concerned, though many had been playing this game with professional master’s programs for some time before that.

Obviously, these four logics are not mutually exclusive.  All four logics exist in the UK and the US.  France and Germany use all but Pecuniary Interest (though France is considering adding the pecuniary motive for at least some international students).  Canada only uses two (War for Talent and Pecuniary Interest); unlike Australia it effectively does not use higher education for non-profit soft power purposes.  Most countries struggle to even use one logic. 

But even though the logics are not mutually exclusive, they nevertheless have different policy goals and justifications, and different cases for support.  Yet policies designed for Pecuniary Interest regularly get dressed up in War for Talent or Soft Power clothing partly for public consumption but also because many universities find it unseemly to talk about money where international students are concerned and prefer to clothe it all in Soft Power terms, or in words like “diversity”. The same goes for so-called “national strategies” on internationalization.  The result is a lamentable lack of policy clarity and policies situated in one logic getting justified by rhetoric rooted in another.  This confusion also has complicating effects when it comes to international policy analysis.  Comparing American policies to ones in Germany or Canada makes almost no sense because the number of logics at play and the interplay between them are so different: yet policy makers do that kind of thing all the time because the differing underlying logics are assumed either not to exist or not to matter.

As long as enrolments keep growing, this confusion perhaps does not matter greatly.  But at a time when international applications to US schools is decreasing, understanding the nature of the challenge is key to developing appropriate responses.  If the current drop-off is mainly harmful to the Pecuniary Interest logic, then that is serious, but represents a very different level of threat to the national economy than if America’s competitiveness in the War for Talent is being harmed.  One hurts specific institutions, the other hurts the whole country. 

As Canada begins its own re-examination of its international post-secondary policies, it would be useful to clarify which logics are being foregrounded by which policy actors, and why.  Not only would it make for clearer policy, it would also simplify accountability for outcomes.  I know that’s a terribly un-Canadian thing to ask for, but it would be good nevertheless.

A version of this post is available at the Inside Higher Education website