The new government is reviewing the UK’s international education strategy. Universities UK in its recently-published blueprint for Labour’s HE policy has called for a wide-ranging global higher education strategy to take its place.
The argument is that international higher education policy has become reduced to questions of international recruitment numbers, and visa regimes, rather than a more holistic assessment of the benefits to the UK that accrue from the breadth of universities’ international engagement, and the synergies between the various international engagement activities. Within that argument, though, is an astute acknowledgement that it is in the interests of both government and the higher education sector to take the political heat out of international student recruitment, underpinned by a proposal for a new compact “to ensure stable and sustainable growth in international student numbers.”
There are several dimensions of political tensions that come with increasing international students. One is simply about the impact of international students on published immigration numbers, which have been repeatedly weaponised by policymakers seeking to appease voters sceptical of immigration. The other is about the perception of the impact on public services, housing, and local communities. The then-government’s language about the ban on international students on taught courses bringing dependants to the UK exploited both dimensions, promising to “slash migration” and “protect our public services.”
A change of government has brought a notable shift in tone around international student recruitment, with Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson paying tribute to the courage and contribution of international students in a speech at the Embassy Education Conference in July:
These people are brave. They move to a new culture, far away from their homes and their families. They take a leap of faith, hoping to develop new skills and chase new horizons. And I am enormously proud that so many want to take that leap here in the UK. And we will do everything we can to help them succeed.
Words like these will come as balm to a part of the sector that has felt unreasonably embattled in recent years. But in its blueprint Universities UK acknowledges that despite positive noises from ministers, the core political reality remains unchanged; a sizeable chunk of voters remain sceptical on principle and there is a cadre of commentators, politicians and rabble-rousers who would be only too pleased to exploit any hint that higher education was being irresponsible on international recruitment.
The larger settlement with higher education relates to funding; in the ideal world higher education institutions would be able to break even on home student teaching and research, and the income stream from international recruitment would not be existential. But even without a sustainable funding settlement from Westminster or the devolved governments, it is in the sector’s interests to work towards articulating a well-managed and sustainable international student growth agenda that can secure public and political support (or at least, tolerance), best realise the benefits of international students to the UK and, crucially, make it clear that the goal is not just recruitment but international student success.
For the UK to remain competitive as a destination for international students, its universities need to stay focused on supporting international students to achieve what they want from their UK study experience. For many applicants, that means employability and/or employment. IDP’s Emerging Futures research surveying international applicants and current students consistently demonstrates “good employment opportunities” as a critical driver for international student choice, coming second after “high quality of education.”
In the latest iteration of Emerging Futures research, which has just been published, the ability to apply for a post-study work visa was a strong influencing factor in destination choice for 52 per cent of those surveyed.The availability of post-study work policies such as the UK’s Graduate Route is a helpful signal, but it is not the same thing as specifics on employment opportunities for international students.
“The reputation of the UK as a leading destination for international students relies in no small part on the idea that students get a return on their investment, to put it in crude terms. The UK’s visa offer is only part of that,” says Harry Anderson, deputy director at Universities UK International. “Students want to do well and go on to secure good jobs. It is striking how much this comes up with international delegations, especially from countries like India, who want to know about the support they can get from university, how the UK labour market is performing and what is going on.”
The problem, as Harry explains it, is that there is “a bit of a data desert when it comes to robust data on the outcomes of those on the Graduate Route.” UK graduates are tracked via Graduate Outcomes which surveys first degree holders 15 months after graduation. The funding for capturing international student outcomes as part of that exercise has declined in recent years, but the blame for the wider lack of data can’t reasonably be laid to Graduate Outcomes’ door. Jobs and salaries don’t have the kind of international comparability that a mass survey of this nature could reasonably capture, and the costs of generating a sufficient sample to draw actionable conclusions about whether UK HE is providing what international students need would be prohibitive. More importantly perhaps, given the majority of international students are postgraduate taught, beefing up Graduate Outcomes would not address the need for better insight on international student outcomes.
The MAC review of the Graduate Route
From a Westminster government perspective the core questions driving data collection on international student outcomes relate to outcomes for those who stay in the UK. One of the unexpectedly useful outcomes of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) rapid review of the Graduate Route earlier this year was that data analysis conducted for the review presented a much richer picture than was previously available.
“Before we conducted the review we knew nothing about, for example, which universities those on the Graduate Route had come from,” says Brian Bell, chair of the MAC and professor of economics at King’s College London. “Now we have linked Graduate Route Home Office visa data to HMRC data we know a lot about demographics, the salaries and industries they are working in. For example, we know that last year 91 per cent of users of the Graduate Route were PGT. It’s certainly not perfect but the data opens up the possibility of digging more into things like which courses they do.”
One of the MAC’s recommendations from its review of the Graduate Route was that the Home Office should require data to be collected on the class of degree achieved by international students, as well as a wider recommendation that the government should not introduce new migration routes without explaining what data it will collect to monitor whether its policy objectives are being met, and any unexpected impacts. Brian describes the broad conclusions of the review as being that around 60 per cent of Graduate Route visa holders earn quite well within their first year of graduating, and could potentially qualify for the Skilled Worker route, while around 40 per cent are earning relatively low wages, working in the care sector, retail or similar industries.
The Graduate Route is officially agnostic about the kind of work international graduates undertake while in the UK – there is nothing wrong in the abstract with taking on lower-paid work as part of a lifestyle choice or longer term career aspiration. Some may be freelancing/self-employed, or building up experience in highly competitive industries. But, Brian points out, a large number of international students studying in the UK are doing a one-year postgraduate taught degree in subjects including business. It is “not compelling” he says, “that we shouldn’t look at salary data for that cohort.”
Brian explains that while the MAC “tends not to look closely at things like surveys of public opinion, we do think about risks to the integrity of the HE system, and of potential harms to the reputation of the UK. The current government is committed to the Graduate Route, but there may come a point if we keep seeing data that a large group of students is really not achieving good labour market outcomes, the government will ask what is going on here, what are you selling to these students?”
He adds that while the MAC recommended maintaining the Graduate Route in its current form, some of the data the committee reviewed gave members pause. “There is real concern about certain universities increasing their PGT numbers astronomically, whether in terms of percentage growth or absolute numbers. It is not clear they have taken any consideration of the impact on the local area and local housing. That’s exactly what Australia is now looking at, driven especially by concerns in Sydney and Melbourne. It is disappointing that there are some universities who don’t seem to care enough about the student experience after graduation and focus too heavily on the financial benefits of international students. If universities are promoting the Graduate Route as part of their offer they have a moral and reputational obligation to help students in the UK labour market, and we didn’t feel there was enough of that.”
Forward thinking on international employability
While there remains a degree of concern among policymakers about a lack of attention to international student outcomes in some quarters, the higher education sector can also demonstrate some notable forward thinking around international student employability. At the forefront of practice, universities are thinking about international student outcomes and employability much more from the student’s perspective, where taking up a role in the UK labour market is likely to be one of multiple options for global employment. For prospective international students and those advising them, it is important to be able to benefit from a breadth of offer around employability support and connect this to the range of labour market opportunities available both in the UK and globally. That there remains a gap in this area is confirmed by a recent report on international graduate outcomes from Universities UK International which found that 53 per cent of international graduates surveyed felt more could be done on careers support and professional placements.
GradLink, an international careers website hosted by UWE Bristol but used across UK higher education, has since its inception focused on developing international labour market insight and partnerships and has recently added a UK employment section. Originally the intention of GradLink was to help local employers in students’ home countries understand the value-added involved in recruiting graduates with degrees from UK universities. David Gee, global employability development manager at UWE Bristol and creator of GradLink suggests that, especially since the MAC review of the Graduate Route, students are considering their broader employment options rather than focusing primarily on employment in the UK – which is a shame, he adds, as if there was a greater degree of policy stability, international students could potentially be a valuable source of higher-level skills, especially in STEM.
On the wider question of the available data, one of the benefits of GradLink is that it can offer a lot of insight into the realities of the job market, as David explains: “We can see what jobs are being posted, what CVs are being asked for, which employers are joining the site. We put a lot of effort in reaching out to alumni – they are a good source for getting the reality of what’s happening, how hard it is to find jobs, or how they managed to get where they are. We use a lot of quotes from graduates in our blogs, which have been really successful.” It is this kind of granular qualitative insight that can feed back into wider employability and careers support.
At Aston University, an institution that has historically strong industry links, being able to maintain a focus on offering employability drivers like industry placements is part of the overall international recruitment strategy. A large careers and placements team, in addition to managing relationships with employers and industry, collects data and insight on industry needs from the university’s partners, which feed into the curriculum. More widely, a network of international hubs in places like India, Dubai, Singapore, and Vietnam offer offshore programmes but also insight into international labour markets, and ongoing engagement with graduates post-graduation. All Masters programmes at Aston now have a “global advantage” module that prepares students for employment in emerging international markets.
Aleks Subic, vice chancellor at Aston and member of IDP UK’s strategic advisory board, is extremely robust on what he believes are universities’ responsibilities on securing the consent of local communities for sustainable international recruitment. At Aston, international students currently make up about 20 per cent of overall student numbers, with plans to grow this to around 25 per cent. “If you do this in a purposeful balanced manner you can maintain standards but if you are growing too quickly you get the friction,” Aleks says. “We have explained to the city and West Midlands Combined Authority that we need to seek growth to address the pitfalls of our funding model and they understand that this is done purposefully and limited to 25 per cent. 70 per cent of Aston graduates stay in the region to help to build the region – that kind of consistency is viewed positively by the city, and we have the confidence of the community in how we go about things.”
The downside of managed growth, Aleks adds, is that the university cannot tactically rely on international students to avoid making changes to its operating model as, he suggests, a handful of others have done. Aleks suggests that a policy like that adopted by the Australian government of offering a “performance dividend” for universities that can demonstrate good employability and graduate outcomes for all students could drive the right kinds of behaviour. Such a proposal might not find universal favour with heads of institution, to put it mildly, but there is an underlying point about the UK needing to enhance its reputation for effective employment support for international students if it is to remain internationally competitive. To do this means tackling that “data desert” at a greater scale than an individual institution can achieve.
Global universities
From a wonkish perspective, any data is good data, but the desire for insight has to be balanced with the cost of securing robust data, and the likelihood that the data collected is actionable. Routine annual collection of employment outcomes data for all UK international students would be hugely expensive and would require a lot of contextualisation and benchmarking to generate meaningful insight. Instead, it makes sense to think in terms of building a more nuanced data picture to serve a range of objectives.
At the national policy level, capturing data on those international students who stay in the UK on the Graduate Route or take up Skilled Worker visas can help to build a macro case for international student recruitment as part of a wider global higher education strategy and drive positive behaviour in terms of supporting international students who use the Graduate Route to secure good quality jobs. One of the questions the MAC flagged as under-researched is the extent to which employers understand how the Graduate Route works and how useful it is – both government and universities presumably have a role in helping employers understand how to make the most of the route, particularly in sectors where there is an identified skills gap that international graduates might fill.
Harry Anderson considers the findings of the MAC review to be helpful in moving the data agenda forward. “It’s less of a policy design concern right now, because if an international graduate ends up working in a job that is not at graduate level while on the Graduate Route, then they would either need to take up skilled work to stay here or leave when their visa expired. To my mind, that is the points-based system working as intended. But from a university perspective that is still an issue given the importance of ensuring that the student experience remains first-class and helping students with career advice and support so that they can make the most of the two years they have after graduation.”
Though we know from various sources about the perceived value of a UK degree in the global education market, there is a case for generating a more systematic and consistent sector level insight about the global value added of a UK degree for international students. This could include a broad assessment of perception of career readiness and career confidence, and UK and international employer insight, rather than simply focusing on employment outcomes. Sophie Turnbull, director of international recruitment and admissions at UWE Bristol, would be in favour of a more consistent approach to capturing this value added, especially since, as she argues, “We can’t rest on our laurels. All the projections are that in five to ten years things will be very different in international student recruitment markets, so it is really key to be distilling now what the value is of a UK degree. I’d love to see us trying to create a virtuous feedback loop where universities are encouraged to stay focused and keep their eyes on what it takes to develop global citizens.”
But even while the sector keeps the dialogue open with government about what the longer term vision for international higher education looks like and the data instruments that could underpin it, there is still work the sector can do. This need not fall to institutions working individually; there is scope for collaborating to develop and test approaches jointly, to adopt good practice in understanding international student employability and routes to employment, and to enhance them.
Sophie questions whether more could be done to showcase the impressive skills and attributes that international students can bring to their institutions and subsequently to their employers. “We know that when we are admitting students that they have a lot of work experience already,” she says. “Many are coming from international companies or are ahead of the curve in their own country in terms of skills development. We could maybe do more to capture those skills and tell a story about what the students are bringing. What I want the sector to do is remind them of their unique skillset of moving to a different country, navigating the different culture, and what an asset that is, and nurture employers to recognise that.”
As the wider policy discourse shifts to focus on regional economic growth, skills, and innovation, international higher education potentially has a great story to tell about the contribution international students can make not just through the fees they pay, but through the skills they bring and the jobs they go on to do. But in order to do this credibly, universities will need to look carefully at the evidence they hold, what it is telling them, and where the data gaps are.
As Aleks Subic argues: “If we are growing international student numbers, it shouldn’t just be about us fulfilling our income needs or providing a great experience while studying, but having an eye on ensuring that when they graduate they have opportunities to succeed in working life. We want students’ outcomes to be a reflection of a great experience and the relevancy and currency of programmes of teaching, and the strength of the alignment of industry and business and community needs. We don’t operate in a bubble and if we call ourselves global universities then that puts that responsibility to deliver on the needs of the global economy and global stakeholders.”
This article is published in association with IDP in the UK. In the year ahead Wonkhe and IDP will be developing our thinking further about evidencing international student success – drop us a line if you’re interested in being part of the conversation.