Oversea student numbers in HE continue to rise

Today brings news from HESA that the number of overseas students studying in UK HE rose by 6.1 per cent in 2004/5, after a rise of 9 per cent in the previous year.

HESA breaks the data out into EU and non-EU students, noting that the number of EU students has risen sharply due to the accession of the new member states last year, but none of the top 10 countries are actually in the EU. This is very important, as fees are much higher for non-EU students, and the universities get a great deal of money from these overseas students. There were 52675 Chinese students in UK HE alone in 2004/5.

Universities are very keen both to attract more overseas students, to increase fee income, and to find out what they do when they leave, in order to assess whether the eduation they gained here has had a benefit.

Non-EU students are not covered by the first destination survey, and there have been concerns about the quality of services offered to overseas students. Research into careers provision for overseas students was carried out by the Centre for Research and Evaluation (CRE) at Sheffield Hallam University and the Centre for Research into Quality (CRQ) at the University of Central England in Birmingham last year, and the report concluded that the expectations of overseas students often did not match the reality of what was available. Although this was often not the fault of the universities, some of the information that was available about such things as the possibility of term-time working was lacking and needed improvement. Similar gaps between the promised experience and the reality are likely in other areas of HE.

Many overseas students in HE complain that they are seen as revenue sources first and foremost, and as they are so important to the sector, we have to be sure that we are giving the increasing numbers coming the the UK a really high-quality experience. That does not always happen at the moment.

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