3 - The global student market

Summary

Everything is painted so rosy when they are marketing.

~ female, 29, PhD in education, India

INTRODUCTION: STUDENTS ON THE MOVE

In 2006, 2.9 million tertiary students enrolled outside their countries of citizenship, almost five times the 0.6 million in 1975. Since 2000 foreign tertiary students have increased at 7.5 per cent per annum, twice the rate of increase of tertiary students as a whole. Tertiary campuses are ‘more cosmopolitan thereby intensifying the intercultural aspect of internationalisation at home in host countries’, says the OECD, though the effects are uneven across the world. Australia has seen very rapid growth of international students coupled with modest growth in local students, an extreme version of the overall pattern. The degree of intercultural education is less clear.

This chapter describes the patterns of global student mobility, including the expanding commercial market in foreign degrees, with some focus on Australia.

ROOTS OF GLOBAL MOBILITY

Cross-border mobility has roots in globalisation, policy and market forces:

During the early years, public policies aimed at promoting and nurturing academic, cultural, social and political ties between countries played a key role, especially in the context of the European construction in which building mutual understanding between young Europeans was a major policy objective. Similar rationales motivated North American policies of academic co-operation. Over time, however, driving factors of a more economic nature played an increasing role. Indeed, decreasing transportation costs, the spread of new technologies, and faster, cheaper communication resulted in a growing interdependence of economies and societies in the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s. This tendency was particularly strong in the high technology sector and labour market. […]