Is the growth of international student mobility coming to a halt?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Skills Beyond School Division,  Directorate for Education and Skills

Higher education is one of the most globally integrated systems of the modern world. There still are important barriers to the international recognition of degrees or the transfer of credits, but some of the basic features of higher education enjoy global convergence and collaboration. This is most visible in the research area, where advanced research is now carried out in international networks. But also in the field of teaching and learning, the international dimension has become very important. The so-called European Higher Education Area stands out as an area where degree structures, credit transfer arrangements and quality assurance frameworks have been aligned in order to adjust qualifications with the needs of an integrated labour market.

Yet, higher education is also one of the most unequal and hierarchical systems of the modern world; globalisation has not yet made the world of higher education a ‘flat’ one. There are huge imbalances between the quantitative supply and demand of education. And the imbalance in quality is even more striking: using an imperfect measure of quality such as the one provided by the global university rankings, one can immediately see that the perceived quality and reputation of academic institutions is concentrated in just a few countries, while the demand is exploding in other parts of the world. The academic top league (say, the top 50 institutions in any of the global rankings) is particularly concentrated, and because of the metrics used to determine quality it is very difficult for institutions in other parts of the world to enter that club.

To some extent international student mobility can be seen as a consequence of global academic inequality. Students are moving to other parts of the globe in order to find the best possible education their money can buy. International student mobility is one of the ways through which the geographical gap between supply and demand is being overcome. Investing resources in one’s son or daughter in order to secure them a high-quality credential has become a preferred strategy of affluent middle class families in emerging countries, especially after their purchasing power started to increase. The chart above shows that for many years the total number of international students remained rather stable around 1 million, but that from the 1990s onwards the numbers started to grow significantly. Some countries were quick to tap into this opportunity and developed strategies to market their higher education offer. From 0.8 million in 1975, the number rose to 4.2 million thirty-five years later.

Many people expected the growth to continue and even to accelerate. But that is not what happened, as is also clear from the chart. From 2012 onwards the growth really stopped. Between 2012 and 2015 a mere 100 thousand students were added to the 4.5 million. The recent figures, published in the OECD’s latest Education at a Glance, suggest that it is not just a temporary setback, but a more structural phenomenon.

What could be the reasons for this change? We probably need to look at developments both on the demand and the supply side. Regarding the former, the obvious explanation is the improvement of domestic education in the most important countries of origin. China, and to a lesser extent India, have invested huge resources in developing their higher education system, including a select number of universities that are predestined to achieve world-class status in the next few years. Chinese universities are now aggressively entering the global rankings and continue to improve their ranks every single year. Changing prospects at home have an impact on the investments strategies of affluent middle-class families in these nations.

Still, changes on the demand side alone cannot explain the lack of growth. Indeed, the potential reservoir of interested students in these countries remains immense. We also have to look at the supply side, to developments in the main countries of destination. It is evident that in the main countries active in the field of exporting education services, things have fundamentally changed as well. From a very hospitable and welcoming approach to international students, popular and political attitudes have reversed things into a much more hostile stance. This has happened in the main destination countries such as Australia, the UK and the US, but also in upcoming players such as Switzerland, Sweden or the Netherlands. The general backlash against migration, aggravated by the refugee crisis and the flows of asylum seekers, has also turned the climate for foreign students upside down. Populist and often false accusations that foreign students are only interested in permanent migration, and that they take the future jobs of domestic students, are now in the media every day.

The recent 2017 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange data, published by the Institute of International Education (IIE), points to a decrease of 7% in the numbers of new international students enrolling in US higher education institutions. The majority of surveyed institutions (52%) in the IIE survey expressed concern that the country’s social and political climate could deter prospective international students. In the UK, a political decision is being discussed of removing international students from the government’s target of reducing net immigration. Still, Brexit and a general hostile climate against migration in the UK is probably also becoming a deterrent for international students. Similar developments can be seen in other countries of destination.

What is happening at both the demand and supply side of international higher education is fundamentally reshaping the size and direction of international student mobility flows. In a strange way, they are reshaping the global academic inequalities. At the same time they are also redefining where and how the future professionals and leaders of the 21st century world will be educated. Just as much as academic education was an important instrument in shaping the post-WWII global order, the current changes in international education will have a profound impact on the 21st century world.

Links 
Education at a Glance 2017: OECD Indicators
Open Doors 2017

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How to surf the new wave of globalisation

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Globalisation is connecting people, cities, countries and continents, bringing together a majority of the world’s population in ways that vastly increase our individual and collective potential, and creating an integrated market in products and services. One in three jobs in the business sector now depends on demand in other countries. In fact, a single product is often produced by workers in different parts of the world along the so-called Global Value Chain. Global value chains give small companies and countries unprecedented opportunities to reach global markets and create new jobs.

But the same forces have made the world more volatile, more complex and more uncertain. The rolling processes of outsourcing and the hollowing out of jobs, particularly for routine tasks, have radically altered the nature of work. For those with the advantage of the right knowledge and skills, this is liberating and exciting. In India and South East Asia, for example, online providers have picked up the outsourced functions of corporate and public enterprises, while in America and Europe, 20-something entrepreneurs are using disruptive Internet models to invent new services. However, for those who are insufficiently prepared, it can mean unemployment or the scourge of vulnerable and insecure work: zero-hour contracts without benefits, insurance, pension or prospects.

So there is a potential weak link in global value chains: the workers who don’t have the right cognitive, social or emotional skills to contribute to – and benefit from – it. The 2017 OECD Skills Outlook shows there are over 200 million workers in OECD countries who don’t even have the most basic foundation skills: for example, they don’t read as well as a 10-year-old child is expected to read. This matters a lot. In all countries more educated workers enjoy higher job quality. But while better integration with global value chains has resulted in significant increases in productivity, it has also widened the gap in job quality between those with better and worse skills.

To ensure that no one is left behind, countries need to equip all workers with a mix of skills and qualifications that are relevant and understood around the world. These skills are needed to realise the productivity gains offered by global value chains and ensure that these gains transfer to a broad range of firms, including small ones, and thereby benefit the whole economy. They can protect workers against the potential negative impacts of global value chains, including job losses and lower job quality. And they are crucial for countries that want to specialise in the most technologically advanced manufacturing industries and in complex business services.

Reaching the technology frontiers and specialising in technologically sophisticated industries is what many countries aspire to these days, because it is those industries that largely drive innovation, higher productivity and job creation. The Skills Outlook analyses how successful these efforts are, and what individuals, companies and nations can do to advance their position in global value chains. Countries like Estonia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand already have the talent pool to capitalise on a wide spectrum of specialisation opportunities across the different technologically advanced sectors. Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia are currently better positioned to thrive in advanced service sectors, while the skills of Canadians, Chileans and Finns are better aligned with high-end manufacturing. Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States still have a comparative advantage in complex business services, but they need to watch out because their talent pool is no longer well-aligned with further specialisation in either advanced services or manufacturing. In fact, in Australia, Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom the talent pool no longer provides the skills several high-tech industries demand; as a result, the comparative advantage in these industries has actually deteriorated.

So education and skills policies come into play, but migration, labour market and tax policies also need to be revisited so that they too are aligned with countries’ ambitions to advance along global value chains. It is important to bear in mind that countries’ comparative advantages always emerge from the interaction between skills and industry requirements – which underlines the importance of connecting the world of learning with the world of work. That can include vocational education and training with a strong work-based learning component, local initiatives to link education institutions to the private sector, and specific policies to foster collaboration between the universities and research institutions and the private sector. Management policies, too, can be a source of comparative advantage in global value chains, and entrepreneurship education can foster awareness and knowledge of best practices for employers and workers. It is also important to design employment-protection legislation that provides both flexibility to firms and security to workers.

And don’t expect workers to accept losing their jobs through outsourcing or automation if they don’t feel prepared to get or create new ones. Countries need to seek a better balance between short-term training and labour market programmes for displaced workers, and long-term policies that facilitate lifelong development of the knowledge and skills for tomorrow’s world. Removing barriers to further skills development means working on several fronts: whether it is improving the tax system to provide stronger learning incentives, easing access to formal education for adults, or working with trade partners to enhance flexibility in the sharing of time between work and training.

Countries also need to work together to define workers’ skills so that employers around the world understand what diplomas and degrees really mean, and become better at recognising skills acquired informally or abroad. Recognising skills acquired abroad makes it easier for foreign students and workers to contribute to research, innovation and workplace performance; recognising skills acquired informally helps workers exposed to the risks of offshoring to gain further qualifications and adapt their careers to changing needs. This is also about ensuring greater consistency between the degrees awarded and the skills actually acquired. As the report shows, the issue isn’t just that, in many countries, there is a significant dispersion of skills among workers with similar degrees; the data also show that Japanese high school graduates have stronger literacy and numeracy skills than Italian or Spanish university graduates.

Last but not least, global value chains make it much harder for countries to recoup their investment in education. This suggests that countries need to collaborate more in the design of education programmes and perhaps seek financing arrangements that reflect the distribution and benefits of costs across countries.

None of this is easy, none of it will be done overnight. But with forward-looking policies and a shared understanding of what workers’ qualifications signify, countries can both improve their international competitiveness and help more of their citizens benefit from this wave of globalisation. And the alternative is clear – just visit Albania or any other of the countries that have excluded themselves for half a century from international collaboration and global value chains.

Links
OECD Skills Outlook 2017: Skills and Global Value Chains 
OECD National Skills Strategy
Find out more about OECD work on skills: http://www.oecd.org/skills/
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