The international student revolution – Changing academics’ attitudes

Universities, to a certain degree, have always competed with one another in the international market. They have always attracted international students. However, the marketisation of higher education has increased its pace, and new competitors such as China, Saudi Arabia, India and Brazil are entering a global marketplace that used to be monopolised by Anglo-Saxon and American universities.

Within this context ‘established’ universities, even those with an international reputation and deep resources, are having to market themselves.

Sometimes, strategically, they have to collaborate with one another in order to become more visible and appear stronger and more reputable – that is, stand out from the crowd in the international market, in order to attract more international students.

Higher education institutions in the UK have been proactive in recruiting international students for the past two decades.

But since public funding has gradually been reduced over the course of successive governments (Conservative 1979-97, Labour 1997-2010 and Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition 2010 to the present), UK institutions have had to intensify their efforts to recruit international students by marketing their courses and their provision of student experience abroad.

The UK has an internationally recognised higher education system and, after the US, is the second most popular destination for international students.

In this context, the most important issue is the experience of international students in UK universities. Remaining questions are: What are international students getting from their teaching and learning experience? What do UK academics do in classrooms that internationalises the teaching and learning process? And what means of support for learning are in practice and available to international students?

Understanding the international student experience

In order to understand the experience of international students in UK higher education, one has to look at all aspects of their experience and analyse them as a whole. These aspects do not make sense when looked at and treated as separate parts.

For example, if one looks at international students’ experiences but does not take into account their achievements and outcomes, one cannot possibly understand what their experience means – that is, what problems and issues are involved and how the quality of the experience is perceived.

Internationalisation in the teaching and learning process involves the development of students’ abilities to acquire, understand, analyse, interpret and apply skills and knowledge, and to understand and respect multicultural perspectives related to their academic and professional areas.

In my research, international students defined and associated internationalisation in the teaching and learning process as the exposure to and the experience of engaging with students and teachers from different countries and backgrounds in the classroom.

These engagements provide them with the opportunity to see things from different cultural and professional perspectives, bringing the learning activities in the classroom to a new level in which the ground rules are communication, understanding multiple perspectives and analysis of practices, and respect for multicultural diversity.

We cannot rely on the use of the English language to set British universities apart as centres of the internationalised educational world, where English is the universal language. Higher education institutions around the world are already providing curricula, courses and teaching and learning material in English to attract international students and to achieve a reputation as an international teaching and learning destination.

Academics’ attitudes a problem

UK academia can no longer hold an ‘internalised’ assumption that all international students are the same and have the same abilities, learning styles and approaches to learning, independently of where they come from, or about their socio-economic background and previous learning achievement.

Many academics seem to ignore the fact that international students are learning and operating in two modalities of the English language: the English language spoken in day-to-day conversation with their friends and native English speakers, and the English language spoken in their discipline. The two modalities do not have the same vocabulary and meaning, and they have different usages.

The crucial issue in UK academia, in this neo-liberal context, is how to deal with academics who are only interested in research and publication in order to further their careers, and who see teaching, student support and contact – particularly with international students – as a barrier to their personal goals and needs.

International students are regarded as ‘cash cows’ both by academics – who use ‘otherisation’ as a mechanism to deal with their internal dichotomy of maximising fee income from international students and pursuing departmental and personal research and career priorities – and by the new managerialised higher education institutions – which use the fees of international students to balance their books.

The Higher Education Funding Council allocated £3.2 billion (US$5 billion) for teaching and £1.6 billion (US$2.5 billion) for research in 2012-13. Notoriously, many universities use teaching funding to subsidise research.

International students contribute more than £5 billion to the UK economy every year compared to US$20.23 billion in the US, US$9.4 billion in Australia and US$6.5 billion in Canada.

In the academic year 2010-11, some institutions in the UK increased their numbers of international students by 25% to 50%, varied by disciplines with the humanities, social sciences, and management and business studies attracting the most international students.

In this context, ‘otherisation’ means anybody who sounds different, looks different, behaves differently or holds beliefs different from ours. Academics with this attitude label international students as incapable, dependent, submissive, passive and intellectually deficient.

This ‘deficit’ model provides them with the ‘fuzzy reasons’ for excluding themselves from engaging with, supporting, guiding, interacting with and teaching international students.

UK academics have ‘idealistically’, for one reason or another, projected home students as active and ‘independent pursuers’ of knowledge and engaged in deep learning. These powerful concepts are meaningless when taking into account that undergraduate and postgraduate international students perform and achieve academically as well as their home students counterparts, and sometimes even better, depending on the discipline.

The 21st century international student

International students are not the docile and quiet students sitting in the corner of the classroom that they once were.

They are aware of their rights, they are aware that they are paying higher fees for their education, and they are exercising their choices and making conscious and rational decisions where to go for their international teaching and learning experience.

They are looking at university rankings, subject-based rankings and student satisfaction surveys, and these 21st century international students will become a terrifying prospect for higher education institutions and their academics.

Nor can we rely only on the ‘new’ teaching styles – that is, role-play, group work, group discussion, projects, seminars and debates. They have been around since the 1960s as developed by critical and feminist pedagogies, but have been made apolitical in order to find a common ground that might achieve the difficult task of suiting all areas and disciplines in higher education.

International students desire more than PowerPoint. They want videos-DVDs, simulation and games, and one-to-one interaction with professors. Mainly they want practice and work placements in order to get a job in the international labour market.

But what really makes the experience for international students stand out is being treated as equals and with respect, based on an understanding that their cultural values and traditions need time and practice to open up to different experiences provided in an international context, instead of being labelled as annoying dependents who are ‘cheaters’ and ‘plagiarists’. These denigrating qualifiers are used when academics refer to international students, as if these were not qualities that home students ever display.

The main challenge for any higher education institution around the world, which wants to build a business case predicated on the high fees to be charged in the international market for higher education, is: how to address the behaviour and attitudes of academics towards international students in order to make them feel accepted and supported in the teaching and learning process?

The question is: Are we using the cash cows for easy money, or are we herding, training and educating them? This is a matter that needs serious and continuing investigation and attention from all UK higher education institutions.

* Dr Paulo Charles Pimentel Bótas is a research officer in the International Centre for Higher Education Management, School of Management, University of Bath. He is speaking at the Society for Research into Higher Education's “Internationalisation and Marketisation of the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Student Experience” seminar, on 15 June in London.