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Abstract
Universities, as part of the neoliberal regime imposed on them, are being co-opted into a ‘war for talent’, in which national economic success is heavily invested. We examine part of this ‘war’ that affects universities directly – the recruitment of ‘the brightest and the best’ internationally mobile students and their subsequent retention by the host country as high-skill workers. After an account of this war for talent and its implications for higher education, we review the literature on study-migration transitions by international students and identify gaps in both data and theorization. We propose a three-part model that uses the notion of ‘flows’ to organize a research agenda in this field and the possible roles of universities in implementing it. We conclude that only by resisting full recruitment into this global talent war can academic researchers continue to maintain the integrity and value of their professional and disciplinary calling.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The fetishization of public debt repayment in the United Kingdom and the associated need for austerity by its government after 2010 provides a very similar example of deflecting attention from an ideologically-driven political agenda.
2. An interesting aspect of the global expansion of higher education is that there are now more female students than male, worldwide, but gendered studies of the implications of the global war for talent remain few (but see Docquier, Lowell, and Marfouk [Citation2009] and Pessar and Mahler [Citation2003] as examples, and Kim, Bankart, and Isdell [Citation2011] for an example of the impact on [some] female international students).