We have all understood the domestic importance of highlighting the contribution of international student recruitment to the UK’s economic well-being, while at the same time acknowledging the less tangible impacts of campus enrichment and longer-term soft power. But these outcomes, too, speak of benefit to the UK.
This has made the IES uncomfortable reading when placed in the context of discussions with international partners. It is sometimes hard to avoid the image of the UK as a giant hoover, sucking up ever greater volumes of students and income from around the world to shore up its HE sector’s faltering financial sustainability.
Of course, this is an unfair over-simplification. UK universities that depend on international recruitment for their financial stability (ie the vast majority) do place this within broader international strategies that prioritise partnerships, including student mobility, research collaboration, and in many cases significant levels of TNE.
There is widespread recognition that higher education has a vital role to play in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and what better message to place at the heart of a new IES than one that puts the UK at the forefront of global efforts to harness higher education and research to enable societal advancement?
Moreover, this would align with the UK’s strategic priority of “sustainable development, seeking to reinvigorate progress towards the UN’s SDGs to alleviate poverty and to address some of the root causes of geopolitical instability”.
UK universities feature strongly in the latest Times Higher World Impact Rankings, which look at how universities around the world have impact across multiple SDGs. No fewer than 11 UK universities feature in the top 50, demonstrating how they have helped to build progress in critical areas such as climate action, gender equality, good health and wellbeing, decent work and economic growth, and sustainable cities and communities.
There is widespread recognition that higher education has a vital role to play in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
Universities featuring in these rankings each focus on different SDGs, but all of them are required to demonstrate impact in SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals. While many UK institutions themselves deliver world-leading research and teaching that underpin achievement of SDGs, it’s partnerships that multiply sustainable impact and help to generate equitable outcomes.
Nowhere is this seen more starkly than in the growing refugee crisis. More than 100 million people are now displaced by war and repression, and with only 7% of those of university age accessing higher education, a massive global effort is underway to raise this – the UN High Commission for Refugees has set a target to increase access to 15% by 2030.
The UK plays a significant role in addressing this challenge, with multiple schemes that offer both places at universities around the country, and long-term projects that help to build capacity in situ.
Elsewhere, it has been encouraging to see the deliberations of the International Higher Education Commission (IHEC) taking a more rounded view of what’s needed in a fresh iteration of the IES. Its report ,The Role of Transnational Education Partnerships in Building Sustainable and Resilient Higher Education, notes that UK TNE makes a significant contribution to local HE capacity, counteracts brain drain, and in many cases contributes directly to achievement of SDGs.
The University of London, the UK’s largest provider of TNE through distance, flexible or distributed learning, has recently published an account of its historical and current contributions to transforming lives and societies through sustained global engagement.
More should be made, too, of the pioneering work of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, headquartered in the UK, which provides global leadership and convening power in harnessing international higher education partnerships across the Commonwealth in the service of shared global challenges.
I am not arguing that a new IES should be shorn of any reference to international student recruitment. There is ample evidence of its impact in advancing causes of global concern, not least in quality education (SDG 4) and decent work and economic growth (SDG 8) – but also across many other sectors. But it needs to be part of a more broadly based proposition, where the UK is projected unambiguously as a partner in joint enterprise of mutual and multilateral benefit.
We have had a recent change of government and a promise to “end the war on universities”. The hope is that this will end the febrile environment in which successive media briefings and policy decisions have raised existential questions for universities.
As well as creating space to look at ways of putting the sector on a more sustainable long-term footing, there is a tremendous opportunity to recalibrate the IES and develop a fresh sector-wide narrative that puts global collaboration front and centre, to the benefit of all.