Note: This blog is adapted from a talk I gave to the U21 Network’s COO Network yesterday at McMaster University

There has been a lot happening lately in the world of student mobility and international mobility. Seems like a good time to take a minute and look at the big picture.

Let’s start on the side of the “sending” countries. Data for China in the last couple of years is pretty spotty—a lot of the “information” you see comes from surveys conducted by private sector companies which survey very specific populations and sometimes come to opposite conclusions. As best as can be ascertained, student numbers heading out of China are rising again, albeit not quite to pre-pandemic levels. But the flow has changed: the numbers heading to the US, Australia and Canada—all countries which have had strained diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic over the last few years—are all down. Numbers to the UK and Europe are up; but so too are numbers heading to Japan and some other Asian countries. One thing all these surveys are clear on, though: in future the numbers are probably heading upwards. Young people in China are very concerned about the generally poor labour market (see here for my conversation with Gerard Postiglione that covered this subject among others) and are looking to international study and post-graduate work visas as an alternative to slogging it out at home.

In Indiathenumbersof students heading out of the country to study have been scooting upwards for several years now, mainly to Commonwealth countries and the US. The rise in numbers to Canada, as we all know, has primarily been the result of education being a pathway to permanent residence. That route has been reduced. So the question is where do all those Indian students go now? Because many of these students are more in the market for emigration than education, it’s not clear that there actually is an alternative market; that simply isn’t something that British or American universities can offer. One interesting note about India though is that according to official figures, the United Arab Emirates has emerged as a major destination for Indian students. 

China and India combined make up something like 70% of the global inter-regional student market (that is, students actually leaving their near-abroad to study, i.e. excluding students moving within Europe). And the rest of the world isn’t in any position to catch up. If you combine the third through sixth countries on the list of student-exporting countries, they don’t come close to matching India’s total. The big sources of absolute growth are still—and perhaps always will be—China and India. But there are some surprising countries moving up the list, in particular: Vietnam, Nepal, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. These places are worth a lot more attention than they tend to get from Canadian institutions.

So much for the sending countries; what about the receiving ones? Let’s start with the United States where international student numbers are ticking up but are still slightly below COVID numbers. Here, you have a whole whack of institutions which are just desperate for students because as Nathan Grawe showed in his books Demographics and the Demand for higher Education and The Agile College, Americans—especially in the Northeast—stopped having kids during the Great Financial crisis and there is one hell of a demographic cliff looming in about four years. So there’s definitely a pull factor at work here. Two problems though. First, personal safety usually comes pretty high on the list of things international students are looking for, and the sheer prevalence of campus shootings is a real problem. And second: the looming threat of Cheeto Jesus coming back to power in November’s presidential election. That’s a brake that might be lifted in six months’ time, but until it is, it’s hard to see the US breaking out in international recruitment.

Canada and Australiahave had very similar trajectories in the past couple of years, defined by three elements: i) huge post-COVID increases in international student numbers, mainly but not exclusively concentrated in the community college/vocational education sector, ii) a housing crisis blamed on this student influx (with some justification in Canada, less so in Australia), and iii) the introduction of individual institutional caps on international student enrolment. Both countries are as a result looking at reductions in intakes for next year.

And if you want to see what a reduction in intakes looks like, go no further than the United Kingdom.Though its soft power reputation and European student intake were both trashed by Brexit, the UK was doing all right for international students by increasing its intake from China, Africa, and to some extent South Asia as well. Then, last year it decided to prevent Master’s students—many of whom are adults—from bringing their spouses with them to study, and also threatening to tinker with the Post-Graduate Work Visa system to make it less welcoming. Cue a drop of about 30% in applications to the country’s universities (disproportionately concentrated in newer, smaller, and hence financially less comfortable institutions) and a looming threat of bankruptcy to a system that has been battered for a number of years by government neglect.

Europe should be benefitting to some extent from all this. A number of countries provide significant program provision in English, and their international fees—where they exist at all—tend to be cheaper than in the anglosphere. But in addition to a number of “hot” locations (Dublin, Amsterdam, Berlin) having similar housing issues to Canada’s; there has also been a backlash in several countries, most notably the Netherlands and Denmark, against teaching in English. Small countries in particular have legitimate fears about the disappearance of local languages and universities have been told in no uncertain terms that they need to lay off the English, particularly at the Bachelor’s level. Some countries have done OK teaching in their own language (notably Germany and Portugal, with the latter doing well attracting students from Brazil and Lusophone Africa), but in general Europe is another case where supply of spaces for international students is being held well below demand.

From all the foregoing I think we can take three things.

First: demand for international study is steady or rising. Meanwhile, the supply of places for international students in most of the OECD but especially the Anglosphere, is not growing as quickly. As a result, demand is starting to outstrip supply. International study has many different sub-markets and not all of them are necessarily getting tight at the same rate, but in general, this is something new.

Second: there is no new “go-to” destination for English study. The US could in theory fulfill that role but for a variety of reasons (mainly but not exclusively related to immigration policy) it probably is not going to. So the question is: where are all those students (mainly but not exclusively from India) going to go? Will some new country show up, like the UAE or the Philippines (the latter already is becoming a destination market for Japanese students wanting to speak English, mainly for reasons of cost and proximity)? Or will the reduction in supply cause a reduction in demand? We’ll see.

Third: it’s hard to imagine a better moment for universities in countries with excess demand to start experimenting more with transnational and online education. Obviously, these are very different kinds of markets than the ones we are used to satisfying through in-person education, and they require different kinds of skills to make work (one of which is building partnerships with local institutions to help promote and deliver programming). But it’s the only way to meet market demand. The first half-way competent university with at least some global prestige who figures out how to do this properly is going to make a mint.

I have more thoughts, obviously, but that’s enough for today.