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Page 3 of 43 Summary Section UK HE applicants welcome international students, survey shows :: The Pie News :: 10th April The majority of domestic applicants to UK universities believe

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Page 3 of 43

Summary Section

UK HE applicants welcome international students, survey

shows :: The Pie News :: 10th April

The majority of domestic applicants to UK universities believe that studying alongside foreign students will help prepare them for work in the global marketplace, according to research commissioned by the Higher Education Policy Institute and Kaplan International Colleges

Education agents continue to play a larger role in UK

recruitment :: ICEF Monitor :: 14th April

The use of education agents to recruit international students is becoming increasingly common around the world, to the point where agents are driving significant proportions of international enrolments in some countries A recent survey by Times Higher Education (THE), for example, found that British universities’ commission payments to agents totalled

£86.7 million (US$127 million) in 2013/14 The Observatory on Borderless Education, meanwhile, says that agents now help recruit almost 40% of Britain’s international students

Rankings and Quality :: Inside Higher Ed :: 21st April

At the recent INQAAHE (International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education) bi-annual conference in Chicago, there were more than a few disparaging references to the rankings The conference brought together representatives of national quality assurance agencies from all over the world For individuals who dedicate their working hours (and most likely endless additional hours of reflection and research) to the quest of defining, evaluating and pursuing “quality” for higher education, the rankings are an unwelcome distraction indeed

Education demand sparks a construction boom at universities ::

The Australian :: 11th April

Australia is well regarded for providing high-quality international education, attracting thousands of students from around the world Over the past decades, Australia has emerged

as one of the top five providers of international education services, after the US, Britain, Germany and France

Education’s double bind :: The Australian :: 20th April

It’s one of Australia’s best-kept secrets — an export sector that delivered $16.6 billion in economic gains in 2014 Fourth only to iron ore, coal and natural gas, international education

is the very model of a modern knowledge economy industry

Australian unis should take responsibility for corrupt practices

in international education :: The Conversation :: 20th April

The higher education sector has become increasingly reliant on income from fee-paying international students since Australian universities first entered foreign markets in 1986, a new report from the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption says

Malaysia releases ambitous blueprint for HE sector growth ::

The Pie News :: 16th April

Malaysia’s Ministry of Education released a national ‘blueprint’ of higher education last week, which marks a new phase in the country’s efforts to compete on the higher education global scale

Does Hong Kong remain a hotbed for international education? ::

The Pie News :: 17th April

Since the Umbrella Movement petered to a bureaucratic halt and retired to the negotiating table, the reputation of Hong Kong’s 90,000-odd university students has shifted No longer destined to join the corporate elite, many young Hong Kongers walked the path of idealistic agitator For many there would be no turning back

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International Recruitment: Today’s Issues and Opportunities ::

The Lawlor Group :: 8th April

The number of colleges and universities that are recruiting internationally for the first time is

on the rise After all, having students from other countries on campus can boost diversity, infuse the curriculum with a global perspective, and possibly provide a new source of revenue for many schools To explore the role international recruitment plays in college admissions today, we sought the insight of seasoned recruiters as well as college counselors from around the globe

Government to close two in every five universities :: University

World News :: 17th April

The number of Russian universities will be cut by 40% by the end of 2016, according to Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov In addition, the number of university branches will be slashed by 80% in the same period

Of the 500 students surveyed by research firm YouthSight, 85% said that having students on their course would help prepare them to work in a globalised economy, and 76% said is would help build a global network

And 87% said it would give them a better world view than working only with other domestic students

“Overall, people applying to university are optimistic – though not nạve – about studying alongside people from other countries,” Nick Hillman, HEPI director, told The PIE News

“They know it will make them more worldly-wise, and the results prove today’s students are tomorrow’s global citizens.”

The applicants surveyed were recruited through the UK higher education application platform UCAS, and made up a representative sample of domestic UK applicants in terms of gender, age and school type

Results also showed that applicants’ attitudes towards international faculty are generally positive, with just 4% saying they hope not to have any lecturers from other countries

Some applicants did express concern that the presence of international students in the classroom might impair learning, though the majority disagreed

For example, 29% said they thought that international students might require more attention from teaching staff, though 39% said they would not

Sonal Minocha, pro-vice chancellor for global engagement at Bournemouth University said the survey results aren’t surprising but offer needed evidence in the education sector’s campaign to tackle the “restrictive attitude and policy toward international students”

“We need a consistent and clearer message to our prospective international students to reassure them of our welcome invitation,” she told The PIE News “A lot of damage has been done by the new visa regime So we need a survey like this to be delivering policy impact too.”

In addition to adding original insight to the debate about international students, the survey also marks the tenth anniversary of Kaplan’s university pathway programmes

“We wanted to learn more about the views held by UK-based students about to enter university, of studying alongside international students,” Linda Cowan, managing director told The PIE News

“The results clearly show that domestic students believe their experience at university will be enriched by studying with international students.”

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Education agents continue to play a larger role in UK

recruitment

By (ICEF Staff) :: ICEF Monitor :: 14th April

http://monitor.icef.com/2015/04/education-agents-continue-to-play-a-larger-role-in-uk-recruitment/

The use of education agents to recruit international students is becoming increasingly

common around the world, to the point where agents are driving significant proportions of international enrolments in some countries A recent survey by Times Higher Education (THE), for example, found that British universities’ commission payments to agents totalled

£86.7 million (US$127 million) in 2013/14 The Observatory on Borderless Education,

meanwhile, says that agents now help recruit almost 40% of Britain’s international students

THE has reported regularly in recent years on university commission payments to agents, and those commission values have increased dramatically over the past decade The figure noted above for 2013/14 alone represents a 16.5% increase over reported commissions of

£74.4 million (US$109 million) for 2011/12, and an average commission per student of

£1,767 (US$2,585)

The increasing use of education agents by UK institutions appears to have been triggered in part by the first phase of the Prime Minister’s Initiative (PMI) in 1999 The initiative set a target to recruit an additional 75,000 non-European Union students to the UK by 2005 With those initial targets met ahead of schedule, the PMI was succeeded by a second phase (and new targets) in 2006 All that to say that the two PMI phases ushered in a period of expansion for international education in the UK, one that was accomplished in part through the efforts of education agents around the world

The latest THE survey of UK universities found that:

 Of 158 higher education institutions, all but 19 elite or specialist institutions now use agents to enrol non-European Union students;

 The 124 British institutions that provided admissions data for THE’s 2013/14 survey recruited a total of 58,257 students via education agents This is a 6.4% increase over the enrolment attributed to agents in 2011/12 and represents 32.5% of all new international students reported for the UK last year

Commenting on the expanded use of agents, Vincenzo Raimo, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at the University of Reading said:

“I think in part this is due to increased competition both from within the UK but also elsewhere

in the world We have now seen US universities formally starting to work with agents and being aggressive in the market, and UK universities are having to respond in order to meet ever more ambitious recruitment targets.”

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As the practice of using commission-based agents has become more established, the roles agents can play for schools seem to be expanding, and the need for ways to identify the best agents – and to work optimally with them – is growing in tandem

Beyond revenue

Until now, international education agents have been valued primarily for their location in key, faraway markets – and consequent ability to represent schools to potential students who would otherwise be very expensive or impossible to reach According to this role, the agent introduces a prospective student to a school or institution, and if a student chooses a school, the agent most often receives a commission from the school and, in some cases, fees from the student as well

This student-school matching is still a key function of international education agents, but increasingly, it does not encompass all the potential inherent in working with agents Anna Magyar and Anna Robinson-Pant of the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at University of East Anglia note that it is problematic to consider agents solely from an

“instrumental” perspective “based on the imperative of international student recruitment as a vital income stream.”

Such a perspective is based on a commoditised approach to education – one that considers international students mainly as a source of revenue especially helpful in times of budget cuts and decreasing domestic enrolments Martin McQuillan, writing in THE, said the following about the problems with such an approach:

“A university degree is not a commodity It cannot be bought and sold on eBay A degree is

a positional good; its value is a function of the ranking of its desirability by others in comparison with alternatives … it is the key to unlocking human potential, to securing a more just society … It also contributes to economic growth and cultural achievement.”

For a long time now, agents have been associated with the commercial aspects of international education, and there is growing awareness across international education that this is limiting both in the sense of the respect due to quality agents and in terms of the contribution they make to internationalisation in institutions and schools

Ms Magyar and Ms Robinson-Pant conducted interviews with a small sample of agents that yielded interesting insights into the benefits they see themselves as providing:

“An agent in Taiwan explained how she saw her role as helping clients to adopt a ‘healthy concept about pursuing international higher education’ rather than making multiple

applications

An agent in Japan, comparing his own experience of applying to a UK university many years ago, felt that applicants needed his help to navigate and interpret the vast amount of information now available on the Internet

In many respects, the agents were not only ‘hand-holding’ or selling UK universities to

prospective students They could also help their clients make the transition to another

country and higher education system, through informally sharing their cultural insights and experiences.”

 Institutions enable agents as partners in extending important student and parent support services and so in boosting the quality and fit of incoming students

Taken to its fullest extent, this view considers agents to be “engaged in inter-cultural

communicative practices … [and] also as ‘educators,” as per Ms Magyar and Ms Pant’s line of thinking At the same time, it more openly acknowledges that agents are key

Robinson-to the recruitment process

For institutions to work optimally with agents, as per the points above, they need to know:

 The range of functions the best agents can fulfill;

 The resources they can make use of to identify such agents;

 The practices they can establish to ensure transparent and productive

institution/agency relationships

The case for transparency

The British Council published a guide last year, Managing international student recruitment agents that explores the business case for agents and makes a number of

recommendations targeted to UK institutions The guide emphasises the need for improved training for international office staff, strengthened monitoring of recruitment procedures and results, and better processes for selecting and managing agents

“Much of the discussion about the regulation of agent-led student recruitment is focused on how agents work,” says Mr Raimo, who wrote the guide with co-authors Christine Humfrey and Iona Huang

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“When things go wrong, we’re quick to blame agents The reality though is that the

The London Statement is fine but focuses on one side of the partnership only Universities need to ensure processes for the selection and appointment of agents and then in training and supporting them.”

The guide also makes a strong case for more transparency around university-agent relations – more specifically, that universities should publicly release more information about the agents they work with, the nature of those working relationships, and commissions paid “The current lack of transparency about their use by universities could cause significant harm to the university sector If UK universities do not themselves better regulate the way they work with agents they could instead face imposed external regulation as has been the case elsewhere and as, it is understood, is currently being considered as an option by the UK Government,” says the guide

The authors note that more openness around university-agency relationships bears on the quality of service for students and families as well “Greater transparency in the university-agent relationship is needed to ensure that students and their parents understand the nature

of the relationship between agents and universities,” adds Mr Raimo

The increasing use of agents in the UK and in other key markets around the world brings home the importance of questions about how best to work with agents in a way that not only drives international enrolments but protects the integrity of the industry and, first and foremost, the best interests of students International education is clearly taking steps towards greater transparency and improved practice, and it seems likely that the expanded use of education agents will only accelerate this process

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Rankings and Quality

By Liz Reisberg :: Inside higher Ed :: 21st April

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/world-view/rankings-and-quality

At the recent INQAAHE (International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education) bi-annual conference in Chicago, there were more than a few disparaging references to the rankings The conference brought together representatives of national quality assurance agencies from all over the world For individuals who dedicate their working hours (and most likely endless additional hours of reflection and research) to the quest of defining, evaluating and pursuing “quality” for higher education, the rankings are an unwelcome distraction indeed

I suspect that the frustration of the attendees at the INQAAHE conference is that the rankings too often become a surrogate for quality No matter how many articles appear in the media

or in academic journals explaining the rankings— their flaws, their limitations, etc.—stakeholders outside of the academy will continue to reference them to conclude which universities are “the best” This is all the more frustrating for those of us familiar with the criteria that shape the results of rankings as they are often not relevant to the needs of the individuals and organizations that use them

Yet annual release of international rankings from the Academic Ranking of World Universities

in Shanghai, the Times Higher Education, and QS continue to attract a lot of attention The problem, rarely acknowledged, is that the rankings fill a need With an estimated 16,000 institutions of higher education in the world (more than 3,000 universities in the US alone), some means of making distinctions among them is required Pity the student who has private funding or a scholarship that allows for study anywhere in the world and has to begin to sort through the overwhelming number of options The employer trying to select among several job applicants with foreign degrees and credentials from unfamiliar institutions is often equally flummoxed Governments supporting large scholarship programs frequently rely on rankings

to determine where sponsored students can study, often using multiple rankings to determine

an “acceptable” placement Rankings provide a quick and easily accessible reference and quality assurance schemes do not

The rankings are an efficient mechanism to decrease the total of global institutions to a more manageable number, no matter that the results exclude excellent institutions because they

do not fit the protocol used I will not review the way rankings are constructed here as this analysis has been done in the excellent work of Ellen Hazelkorn and others Suffice it to say that with the exception of the extensive categories provided by US News & World Report, the rankings tend to favor elite, well-funded, research universities and a first-rate university education is most certainly not limited to this type of institution

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The quality assurance schemes operating in most nations provide much more detailed (and relevant) information These programs evaluate degree programs and institutions, one at a time, measuring performance against institutional mission and within a national context The process leading to accreditation includes a long, detailed self-assessment followed by an evaluation by qualified external evaluators The resulting, often technical, reports provide very useful information But to the general public, quality assurance schemes only provide a yes or no answer In other words, the detailed assessment of an institution leads to “yes,” accredited or “no,” not accredited And “yes” covers a lot of diversity in the higher education environment with no mechanism for comparison It is unlikely that prospective students or employers will dedicate the time to reading the evaluation reports (if they are even publicly available) to learn the finer details of an institution’s strengths and uniquenesses

I am not advocating a graded system of accreditation, although some countries do this, only suggesting that while national and international quality assurance agencies provide a much more careful and in-depth assessments of quality than those provided by any of the rankings, their conclusions are less useful because they are less comprehensible to key stakeholders

We have to recognize that there is a general need to make sense of the diverse global higher education environment and, for the moment, the rankings provide a more expedient tool for measuring and comparing institutions than the accreditation agencies If the higher education community (including quality assurance agencies) hopes to diminish the influence of rankings, then we will have to develop a more useful way to communicate how our work affirms quality

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Australia and New Zealand Back to top

Education demand sparks a construction boom at universities

By Besa Deda :: The Australian :: 11th April

The high level of the Australian dollar in recent years had tempered the enthusiasm of international students to study in Australia by making it more costly to undertake tertiary education There was a notable decline in the intake from India and South Korea, but also other Asian nations The depreciation of the Australian dollar, particularly from the middle of last year, has helped spur a recovery in the international education sector

The demand for Australian education facilities means there will be growth in building activity for Australian universities

In the 12 months to February 2015, the value of buildings approved for construction in the private education sector averaged $134.3 million per month, according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics It is the highest value since June 2011, leaving aside the higher result for November 2014

Building approvals are a leading indicator of construction work, so the latest figures suggest further construction in the education sector lies ahead The anecdotes underscore these figures

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One of Australia’s best young universities, the University of Western Sydney, has -committed to 28,000sq m for a new office building at its Parramatta campus This signature high-rise building to be ready by 2017 at a cost of over $120m is expected to allow the university to double international enrolments

pre-Meanwhile, in February, the NSW government approved a $1.4bn facelift of Australia’s oldest university, the University of Sydney This makeover will cater for significant growth at its Camperdown and Darlington campuses The plan will see around eight or so buildings demolished It will take seven years to complete and help boost jobs growth

These projects come on the heels of the $1bn poured into new buildings by the University of Technology, Sydney, which included a high-profile business school designed and renowned architect Frank Gehry A $100m architecture building at the University of Melbourne has also wrapped up recently

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Education’s double bind

By Julie Hare :: The Australian :: 20th April

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/educations-double-bind/story-e6frg6z6-1227310912666

It’s one of Australia’s best-kept secrets — an export sector that delivered $16.6 billion in economic gains in 2014 Fourth only to iron ore, coal and natural gas, international education

is the very model of a modern knowledge economy industry

Having fashioned a new sector from the fragments of a 1950s aid program called the Colombo Plan, Australia invented mass international education in the 1980s

This year 600,000 international students will be educated in our universities, colleges and schools and many tens of thousands more by our educators in their own countries That supports about 130,000 jobs nationally and many more indirectly

But over many years, beneath the ballooning revenues and political braggadocio, there has festered a less salubrious side: one of overcrowded classrooms, questionable academic standards, cheating, rorting and, according to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, perhaps even bribery and corruption

“Between 1988 and 2014, the number of fee-paying international students at universities in NSW increased 13-fold and, today, represent nearly one in five of those studying at universities in this state,” the ICAC report says

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“False entry standards, cheating on English-language proficiency tests, essay mills selling assignments, plagiarism, cheating in university exams and paying others to sit exams are reportedly common.”

Ask anyone who has studied or taught on a city-based university campus in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane and they’ll tell you what the real story is Lectures and tutorials filled

to bursting with overseas students, particularly in business and accounting courses They’ll tell you of classes in which 80 per cent of the students are Mandarin speakers They’ll tell you

of students who can barely speak, never mind write or read, English

It’s a double bind With international students contributing 17 per cent of university revenues, they are a much-needed source of -income

“Students may be struggling to pass but universities cannot afford to fail them,” ICAC bluntly puts it “There is a widespread public perception that academic standards are lowered to accommodate a cohort of students who struggle to pass.” Inevitably, that leads to cheating, says ICAC

Of course, that sort of behaviour is not confined to NSW or to universities, or to international students Domestic students are also known to cheat and increasing numbers get into university with substandard academic abilities

The link between education and permanent residency was established in the 2000s when the Howard government guaranteed permanent residency for foreign students with an Australian degree The scheme took off like wild fire, as institutions such as Central Queensland University set up high-rise city-based campuses designed to ride the wave of students eager for easy residency status But, as Monash University researcher Bob Birrell discovered, it didn’t take long before hundreds of thousands of students, mainly from India, Nepal and China, soon realised they could do a much cheaper and quicker vocational certificate in cookery or hairdressing and still win the prize — the right to legally stay in Australia

In 2009, there were 632,000 international students here, of whom 232,475 were enrolled in mainly private, many dodgy, vocational colleges, an increase of 37 per cent from 2008 Yet the halcyon days of easy visas came crashing to a halt in 2009 when a perfect storm hit the booming sector: the high dollar made an Australian education expensive; increased competition came from Britain, Canada, Singapore and the US; a spate of violent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney garnered widespread negative international press and earned Australia the label of “racist”; and dodgy colleges started crashing — taking their students’ dreams of residency, if not an education, with them

Following a review by Michael Knight, the former NSW Olympics minister, new tougher visa rules meant that trusted providers — the country’s 40 universities and a handful of private colleges — were given streamlined visa-processing (SVP) status allowing them to more easily attract and enrol students

The new rules also put the onus of responsibility for enrolling genuine students on the institution, not the immigration department, with the threat of expulsion from the SVP system

if they are found to have enrolled too many non-genuine students

The system appears to be working Immigration department figures show 7061 student visas were cancelled in 2014, up from just 1978 cancellations in 2012

The issue with who is, and who isn’t, a genuine student starts at the beginning of the student recruitment process Universities employ dozens of agents across many countries and this, ICAC, says, is where the rot sets in

Agents get paid a commission of up to 20 per cent of first-year tuition fees for every student they recruit, says Dean Forbes, a former head of international education at Flinders University Forbes is working on a project on corruption in education in southeast Asia with a group of researchers from Oxford University

With annual tuition fees for a business degree ranging from $18,560 at small regional institutions such as Southern Cross University, to $35,000 at Melbourne University, the incentives for engaging in fraud and deception are high

“Some universities in NSW use up to 300 agents and this was never going to be manageable Document fraud and cheating in corrupt markets (is) well known,” ICAC says

“Without exception, all universities contacted by the Commission had experienced instances

of agents submitting false documentation, assisting students to corruptly pass admission processing or attempting to bribe staff to approve certain student applications.”

It goes on: “In (one) university, the incentive for sales staff was to enrol as many students as the university could accommodate, knowing that once the students were enrolled, any weaknesses in their language or academic abilities would be dealt with by the faculty rather than the international student office Indeed, there was no disincentive to international student office sales staff to accept borderline or underqualified students.”

The federal education department is understood to be drafting a national code for best practice for the use of education agents and consultants

It will suggest, among other things, that universities demand the termination of corrupt agents, develop an industry-led quality assurance scheme and provide information on which agents recruit academically successful students, and which don’t

At the same time, a long overdue draft strategy for the international education sector was finally released by Education Minister Christopher Pyne earlier this month, following a review

in 2011 by businessman Michael Chaney

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While the draft obliquely refers to the importance of a quality system in attracting good students, it does not reference any of the issues raised in the ICAC report or an earlier 2011 Victorian ombudsman’s report that arrived at similar findings

And with the government harbouring grand ambitions for the sector, these issues are going

to have to be faced head on Trade Minister Andrew Robb has suggested the sector could grow to 10 million students by 2022, largely through online delivery, as the expanding middle classes of Asia seek to cement their economic privilege

The question of how that could be achieved without even more compromise to the integrity of the system is not addressed in the draft strategy Submissions to it close on May 29

But back to ICAC, which is explicit in making a correlation between universities’ increasing financial reliance on international students — after successive federal governments cut back per-student funding — and their enthusiasm for turning a blind eye to questionable practices Indeed, research conducted at Melbourne University in 2011 found that every international student cross-subsidises a domestic one to the tune of $1200 a year The study also found international students paid an average of $5000 more than the estimated average cost of teaching their course, with some paying up to $10,000 more, depending on the course and institution

As successive governments have focused on increasing domestic participation — the proportion of people aged 35 and under with a degree is hovering about the 40 per cent mark

— per-student funding has been static or in decline, driving universities to seek alternative revenue streams Total government contributions to big research-intensive universities are now down to about 20 per cent of revenues The sector average is about 40 per cent

One in every five students enrolled in an Australian university is from overseas, a figure that

is as high as one in three in some universities and much higher in business faculties, where international students gravitate Yet national data shows international students pass at a higher rate than their domestic colleagues

“Staff within universities in NSW find ways to pass students in order to preserve budgets,” the ICAC report says

The only robust survey of international students’ academic performance was conducted by University of NSW economist Gigi Foster in 2010

Studying the enrolment and academic pass rates of 12,846 students in the business faculties

of two universities, Foster found international students from non-English-speaking backgrounds underperform domestic students as a result of language and cultural barriers —

as one would expect

But she also found underperformance is less pronounced when there are proportionately more international students in the class Stunningly, she also found that classes composed almost entirely of international students would on average be 6.5 points higher than those courses comprising solely domestic students

The resulting furore — with universities shamelessly in denial and ferociously attacking Foster

— have ensured it is unlikely any full and objective analyses of academic performance will be repeated, a situation that does not sit well with the outspoken Foster

“Universities don’t want to know the truth,” she says, adding that sensitivities over the potential

to appear xenophobic and political correctness also prevent the sector from confronting the issues

Foster agrees with ICAC’s assessment that student recruitment practices through offshore agents go to the heart of the matter

“There’s an assumption that we need to rely on intermediaries to recruit students,” she says

“But if you look at the very best universities overseas, such as Harvard or Yale, the admissions processes are the same for all students whether they are international or domestic and that process is much more detailed and nuanced.”

However, Phil Honeywood, executive director of the International Education Association of Australia, says we need to keep a sense of perspective With nearly 600,000 international students here in any one year — and more than 250,000 of them in universities — there are always going to be cases of people not doing the right thing

Honeywood contends cheating and rorting are not as widespread as ICAC suggests, adding that the report is big on anecdote but short on evidence He also states the case that such behaviours are not isolated to overseas students

Forbes agrees, adding that even locals often perform poorly on language and numeracy tests, pointing to a recent push for literacy and numeracy tests to be conducted on graduating education students before they enter the country’s classrooms as teachers

Besides, says Honeywood, we can’t have it both ways

“We are happy for overseas students to pay two to three times what our own students pay in tuition fees for the same degrees and, in effect, cross-subsidise our children’s educations,”

he says

“We are also content to watch as many of these overseas students do the “dirty” part-time jobs that few of our Australian-born young people would ever stomach doing themselves nowadays

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“Then we want to vilify them for filling up our universities, for lowering our academic standards, for taking our jobs and, even, for pushing up house prices.”

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