International education as a business
International education is a growth industry. According to a recent OECD report, 2.7 million students were enrolled in higher education outside their home countries in 2004 and a figure of 8 million has been projected for 2025. These numbers do not include students in their own countries who attend satellite campuses and programs established by foreign institutions (American, Australian, and British, primarily). Numerical growth is linked to another phenomenon, somewhat awkwardly referred to as the "commodification" of higher education. International students themselves have become a commodity - sought after by institutions to offset shortfalls in public funding and/or tuition revenue and to sustain graduate programs in the hard sciences - while the marketing of study abroad programs focuses on benefits to the students' future careers.
Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, sums up the situation:
Education is becoming an internationally traded commodity . . . to be purchased by a consumer in order to build a "skill set" to be used in the marketplace or a product to be bought and sold by multinational corporations, academic institutions that have transmogrified themselves into businesses, and other providers.
("Farewell to the Common Good," International Educator, 11 (4), 2002.)
What is happening to international education is true for higher education in general. The knowledge-based, technologically sophisticated economies that have emerged during recent decades demand expert advice, scientific knowledge, and specialized training, creating new opportunities for universities but also straining their resources. Knowledge expansion and specialization, increasing numbers of students, the cost of new technologies, and rising expectations with regard to quality of service have increased the cost of operating universities enormously. At the same time, public funding has been cut in both Europe and the US, shifting the burden of paying for higher education to individual students and the private sector in general, and thus creating new institutional priorities. Some view the trend as a positive phenomenon: Entrepreneurial universities respond to the needs of a wider world, providing the training and knowledge transfer needed by surrounding communities and creating economic benefits for individuals and nations. Others lament the commodification of knowledge and the transformation of students into consumers and universities into service providers.
This is the context in which the current growth in international student mobility has occurred. Can international educational exchange survive in a context that is dominated by economic considerations at the individual, institutional and national level?
Access to
the full article is free, but requires you to register. Registration is
simple and quick – all we need is your name and a valid e-mail address.
We appreciate your interest in bridges.
