In 2019 I moved from teaching English language at De Montfort University into my current role more broadly supporting international students in our business school.
The last seven years have opened my eyes to the actual lived realities of international students’ experiences of studying in the UK, to see those experiences rather more holistically than merely through the lens of their linguistic proficiencies.
As I learned and developed in my own understanding of, and approaches to, the international student experience, I came to appreciate the importance of such learning and development for all staff involved in teaching and supporting international students. The importance of ensuring that all staff are equipped with the skills and mindset essential to support the enhancement of this sometimes underserved area of the higher education experience became clear.
I found myself engaged in frequent conversations with colleagues across our sector which returned repeatedly to the same point: an acknowledgement of a lack of practical approaches underway to challenge what can be seen as the “international student deficit model,” and to develop ways to address the issues underlying it.
This was because – as I came to see – one of the more deleterious clichés of British higher education has been the common assumption that international students can be defined by a series of deficits, by the assumption that they lack English language abilities, critical thinking skills, and familiarity with British academic conventions.
The wrong assumption
As academics we’re of course trained to recognise and interrogate preconceptions promulgated without the evidence necessary to support them.
Yet this one somehow relentlessly persists. We’re all aware that our understanding of the world can be led dangerously astray by stereotypes – and indeed, in this case, a tired old stereotype will start to melt away as soon as we look at what’s actually taking place.
When we come to examine the shortcomings of the international student experience, it emerges that the most significant area of deficit may not in fact lie with the students themselves at all.
It may instead lie in the approaches taken by that colleague who lacks an appropriate understanding of their students’ educational histories or with an institution that provides its staff with minimal professional development to support students with different educational and cultural backgrounds. It may lie with a curriculum that treats western academic conventions as universal, incontrovertible and sacrosanct or assessment frameworks that were never designed with diverse learners in mind.
Partners, not pennies
In partnership with colleagues from the University of Wolverhampton, the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University, our QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project has charted these possibilities and has proposed a route towards a more ethical and expansive model of international student pedagogy.
We started by convening a series of workshops involving staff from our four institutions to find out what was really going on in our approaches to international students and how we might improve them. We created these spaces to share good practice – from ways to design inductions to the co-creation of assessment briefs – and involved a broad range of colleagues, from leaders of our international teams to senior academic practitioners, coming together in a spirit of constructive candour to explore the differences we might make.
One point that was particularly striking from the outset was that the participants in these workshops consistently identified the ways in which institutions frame international students as financial assets rather than pedagogic partners.
Unprompted by our facilitators, the term “cash cows” was used directly and repeatedly by members of staff – colleagues stressed that they found this framing at the same time accurate and deeply uncomfortable.
It seems inevitable that the financial logic of their recruitment shapes the conditions in which international students arrive, the speed at which they are expected to integrate, the support made available to them, and the ways in which their presence, expectations, and needs are communicated to academic staff.
We’ve reached the conclusion that when an institution that recruits students as a part of its financial strategy and then tasks individual educators with the consequences of that strategy is producing structural injustice, not a pedagogic problem.
When an institution recruits a student from overseas, taking significant fees, giving them a place that may shape their future and making promises about the education and experience they will receive, it incurs an obligation that goes well beyond logistics. What is required – and this is the fundamental obligation which that institution places upon itself – is that the provider ensures a sustained, resourced, and embedded commitment to the conditions in which that international student can genuinely thrive.
Four ways forward
This has led us to emphasise an urgent pedagogical and ethical imperative to reframe UK higher education’s traditional “international student deficit” narrative.
In order to address this, we’ve developed four interconnected lenses for examining both institutional provision and individual practice. We’ve done this by seeing these issues through the positioning and construction of the international student, the epistemological centring of western academic conventions in curricula, a reflexive examination of the assumptions underpinning pedagogic practice, and an interrogation of the structural conditions that make inclusive practice impossible. This includes workload pressures, large class sizes, late arrivals, a lack of professional development and the financial logic of mass international student recruitment.
Published alongside an audit toolkit and a guide to inclusive practices, our project has also proposed a set of principles designed to underpin ways to support staff in enhancing the international student experience.
- Before you teach, recognise who is in the room as individuals with histories, knowledge, and perspectives, not as a category defined by fee status or visa type
- When a student appears to struggle, ask where the deficit actually lies – honest diagnosis is the precondition for honest intervention
- Act where you can, and name what constrains you: inclusive practice requires both individual commitment and institutional change
- Centre the voices of international students: decisions about curriculum, pedagogy, and support should be informed by the actual experiences of the students they are intended to serve
- The duty of care towards international students does not begin at induction, it begins when recruitment promises are made
- See what international students bring rather than what they lack, and to build the structures that allow those contributions to be recognised and valued
It’s only by valuing all of our students as unique individuals and unique learners, rather than as agglomerations of income-generating assets and recognising the richness of diverse perspectives and experiences that all our students bring that we can begin to build properly equitable and effective learning processes. And in doing so we can share the benefits underpinned and enriched by all those who contribute to the learning experience.
That’s an important lesson for educators, institutions, and policymakers.
And also, perhaps, for all those who in the mass media and public life who have sought to represent the presence of international students in the UK as a problem – or, at best, as an increasingly essential income stream – rather than as a rich cultural and intellectual resource we should endeavour most effectively to utilise, support, sustain, and celebrate.
This project has crucially been a collaborative effort, and as such has highlighted the vital importance of collaboration and co-creation in this space. It has recognised that a hostile environment – one which presumes problems and deficits – helps no one, and that partnership and belonging benefits all.
