We owe international students a duty of care, not criticism

The Western model of internationalisation of higher education follows the paradigm outlined in Everett Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations Theory which describes the pattern and speed at which new ideas, practices, or products spread through a population.

Roger’s theoretical trajectory of innovation diffusion broadly identifies innovators along a spectrum of early adopters (innovators) and late adopters (laggards) and is an example of the imposition of Western ideals on developing nations. In education terms, Western models of internationalisation of higher education deliver higher education as the diffusion of Western ideals, an assimilation paradigm.

The unfortunate legacy of this model is that it problematises international student cohort needs and behaviours after students arrive on campus. Up to that point, the pursuit of international student dollars is a golden, glittery occasion.

I argue that international higher education institutions (public and private) must adopt a deep-level reflective stance to review their own behaviours, including their inability to embrace racial and social justice perspectives and must take responsibility and become accountable for the negative impact their environments have on international students.

There are examples of such negative impact in media reports which highlight rogue agent operations, blame international students for housing crises and cover the capping of international student permits, the turning down of student visa applications and accommodation shortages for international students.

In Canada, for example, mainstream media articles, summed up in headlines like “Canada to cap international student permits amid housing crunch”, can have a prejudicial impact on students.

Real issues (housing, work placements, the rising cost of living, bullying and harassment of international students, theft of intellectual property of postgraduate students and the exploitation by supervisors of postgraduate student research) that emerge in the host nations after institutions have received international student dollars remain unaddressed.

Western institutions of higher education might want to rekindle the age-old practice of identifying host families which has continued to be a successful strategy utilised over decades in the United States and which has been adopted in several Australian programmes (for example, the Home Stay Network and by Inforum Education.
Though this may prove a challenge given the numbers of international students these days, it may provoke greater thought among stakeholder groups and more creativity when it comes to developing alternatives and seeking mutually beneficial solutions.

Addressing toxic cultures

I have long argued that exploitative internationalisation is not the way forward and have promoted a values-based rather than a business-based model.

Stories of hardship, exclusion and scapegoating of international students are rarely reported in the media or within and outside of higher education institutions because students, academics and staff have nowhere to take them.

Last week Morteza Mahmoudi held the first in-person conference of the Academic Parity Movement aimed at “addressing academic bullying, mobbing, abusive supervision, harassment and discrimination at their roots to ensure all bright minds can excel and progress” which included sections that were useful for international students facing exploitative behaviour.

Mahmoudi is an ardent critic of bullying and harassment in academia. He is passionate about the need for all stakeholders to stop bullying, harassment and toxic cultures in international higher education.

He himself has written about his experience of bullying as an international academic. Mahmoudi’s academic parity movement forums are confrontational for those who are complicit in bullying and harassment behaviours in the higher echelons of institutional leadership, naming their clandestine and overt contributions as an attack on the human rights of stakeholder groups.

An international code of conduct

Meanwhile, the demonisation of international students continues. Current media headlines about the “housing crisis” and “inadequate accommodation” and the “rogue agents” who produce false documentation apportion blame to international students instead of focusing on interrogating the combined and separate neglect and lack of a duty of care at the institutional level as well as hidden political agendas.

What is needed instead is a solutions-based, glocalisation alternative incorporating local and global community lived experience, knowledges and perspectives that aims to respectfully negotiate decisions which benefit humanity as a whole.

In asserting that the alternative to current internationalisation is glocalisation, it is essential that agency must come from a combination of the local and global community and their designated education and government leaders who are entrusted to come together to action change and to speak from the heart as one humanity.

Rather than host annual conferences, they should come together frequently as an “action for change forum” which enhances glocal development through visible and tangible actioned change outcomes.

We need to give all stakeholder groups a fair opportunity to share their perspectives within the glocalisation model.

The glocalisation of international higher education invites all viewpoints to the table so that they might agree-disagree respectfully upon an International Code of Conduct for International Student Safety and Wellbeing (ICCISSW).

International higher education, including everyone involved in international student recruitment teams (agents, universities, student services and admissions), would have to abide by this code. International institutions must collaborate on this code which will protect the rights of international students and prevent their exploitation by university administrations, real estate agents and recruitment firms within their home countries and their host countries.

Several components of the proposed code of conduct are listed below.

• International students from both poor and wealthy countries should have guaranteed housing/accommodation and work placement rights from arrival to graduation as part of a humanity-driven service so that they gather work-life experience in the host country.

• The safety, health and wellness of international students should become the responsibility of higher education institutions from the time that the international student signs the agreement as a potential student of any higher education institution (whether private and-or public institutions).

• The institutions in which students have enrolled should carry the burden of responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of students from the moment students travel to the intitution and during their stay in the host country.

• Higher education institutions are responsible and accountable for the wellbeing of all international students, both the poor and the wealthy.

• The ICCISSW covers inequities directed at international students who are forced to pay higher tuition fees than domestic students.

• The higher payment policy should be re-examined and modified on the basis of equity, inclusivity and diversity principles.

• Duty of care principles should ensure that international student cohorts are not bullied, harassed, exploited nor made vulnerable to having their intellectual property stolen by their university professors before graduation.

International student cohorts are criticised at every turn, demonstrating that we have failed the test of humanity in establishing respectful collaborations among our glocal (local and global) communities. We have failed to apply our burden of responsibility, accountability and duty of care to those who are guests in foreign lands. We have failed to view the world from the perspective of the other. We have failed to put humanity first.

Dr Fay Patel is an academic, researcher and international higher education consultant who has contributed to higher education programmes and projects in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, South Africa, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Patel was the former associate vice-president, teaching and student analytics, at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She also contributed to the UNESCO Forums (by invitation of UNESCO Bangkok) in Bangkok, Thailand and in Chengdu, China; as external peer reviewer in the World Bank quality assurance project in Bangladesh; as senior case manager at the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency in Melbourne, Australia; and as an independent reviewer in the Peer Review Portal project in Tasmania, Australia. Patel is the editor of the 2021 book Power Imbalance, Bullying and Harassment in Academia and the Glocal (Local and Global) Workplace. This article is an expansion of the author’s posts shared on Linkedin here.