UK: Future imperfect

Around 900 delegates from the higher education sector worldwide gathered last week in London's docklands for Going Global 3, the UK's largest international education conference organised by the British Council. Speakers at the two-day event focused on themes of student mobility, internationalisation, partnership and employability.

David Lammy, UK Minister for Higher Education who opened the conference, believes he is a good example of the power of international higher education. Lammy was born in one of the poorest areas of London to a single mother who arrived in the UK in the 1950s from Jamaica.

After three years at the School of Oriental and African Studies he became the first black Briton to study at Harvard where he met Barack Obama.

Lammy said there had been a shift in emphasis of internationalisation in British higher education from simple recruitment of overseas students to "a culture of deeper partnerships, of shared research projects and bilateral programmes".

Yet recruitment featured in a debate later in the proceedings when the conference heard that universities in the UK were facing increasing competition in the overseas student market, especially from the US where institutions were marketing their wares more aggressively.

Martin Davidson, the council's chief executive, warned that the current economic downturn coincided with massive and rapid change in the global higher education market. Countries such as China and Singapore, once recruiting grounds for the UK, were developing their own university systems and moving into the overseas market.

Research by the Economist Intelligence Unit in China, India and Nigeria for the British Council also showed that changes in domestic higher education provision, price, exchange rate fluctuations and bilateral trade played an important part in students' choice of overseas institutions.

The UK would have to place greater emphasis on collaborative partnerships with those three countries, researchers said. The pound sterling's expected weakness in the next five or so years made UK education more competitive and an increasingly attractive destination.

diane.spencer@uw-news.com