13/4/2020 Competition for overseas students is going to be fierce | Financial Times

Opinion Coronavirus
Competition for overseas students is going to be fierce
Universities have a chance to lure a new group of middle-income families

JO JOHNSON

Doubts are growing over how many overseas students will enrol on traditional face-to-face courses this September © Alamy

Jo Johnson YESTERDAY

The writer is chairman of Tes Global and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy
School

You don’t know what you got until it’s gone. With international students bundled back
home to continue classes online, the English-speaking countries hitherto dominant in
global higher education are realising what they risk losing.

Politicians have persistently failed to speak up for international students during wider
debates about immigration. They are now waking up to the critical role overseas
students play in underpinning institutions central to the performance of all knowledge
economies.

In the decade before coronavirus struck, the number of international students

worldwide had more than doubled to 5m with that number expected to rise to more
than 8m by 2025.

Now, doubts are growing over how many overseas students will enrol on traditional
face-to-face courses this September. Governments and universities in North America,
the UK and Australia say they are preparing for a drop in international students of
potentially 50 per cent to 75 per cent.

This major reversal for one of the great boom businesses of the globalised economy will
have calamitous consequences for university finances. It will force governments to
choose between costly bailouts and disorderly failures that could throw tens of
thousands of students on to the streets and into jobs markets already in turmoil.

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The challenge is acute in the UK, where 460,000 international students represent 20
per cent of library ticket-holders, massively cross-subsidise research in Russell Group
institutions and contribute £20bn to service exports. Regulators will need to design a
stabilisation fund to prevent the disorderly collapse of scores of vulnerable English
universities. Access to it should be subject to strict conditions, including the closure of
poor-quality courses.

Yet for all the anxiety over the coming year, pessimism about the future for
international education is overblown — even if it may no longer hew to the current
westernised, Anglo-Saxon and mainly English-speaking paradigm.

The push factors remain strong. In key developing countries, such as China and India
which account for a quarter of overseas students, the shortage of places at prestigious
domestic institutions that match social aspirations and academic needs is acute. In
Bangladesh, with its largely young population of 170m, and Sri Lanka, there are an
estimated five students competing for every available university place.

Driven by growth in middle classes in Asia and Africa, the demand for higher education
is set to increase from 160m students in 2015 to more than 414m by 2030, according to
Unesco. To meet that, the world would have to build four universities, each serving
80,000 students, every week, every year.

Only last month, a QS survey of 11,000 prospective international students found 85 per
cent still open to applying — although a significant proportion intended to defer for a
year.

In fact, the disruption from coronavirus could accelerate a new phase of growth.
Traditionally, an international education has been a privilege for those who have the
money, or know how to obtain financial aid. In future, it will probably reach a wider
pool of talent, through two accelerating trends.

First, the disruption to travel and incomes from the pandemic will boost the relative
appeal of opportunities for intraregional study. Many Asian students increasingly
contemplate safer and more affordable options closer to home, in countries such as
Malaysia. Developing countries will increasingly seek overseas students themselves,
with the global north losing market share to the global south.

Second, the crisis will accelerate online, distance-learning and blended courses that
combine online educational materials and classroom interaction. These will interest
middle-income families unconvinced by the return on investment from traditional
multiyear programmes of overseas study.

The best institutions will turn the crisis into an opportunity. In time, demand for
traditional programmes of overseas study will return for the elites who’ve always
accessed it. The academic kudos and status benefits of full-on immersive experiences in
other countries will continue to draw many students.

But the most exciting growth in international education will come from institutions that
use technology to increase access for talented students from income groups for whom it
has previously been out of reach. An international education market that is more

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accessible, less elitist and less carbon-intensive may be one good thing to come out of
the corona crunch.

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