Adapting to change in the higher education system: international student mobility as a migration industry

ABSTRACT

Of late there has been considerable interest in understanding international student mobility, and this has tended to focus on the perspective of the students who take part in this mobility. However, international students are part of a considerable migration industry comprised of international student recruitment teams, international education agents and other institutions selling an education overseas (such as the British Council in a UK context) and as yet there is little research which analyses these relationships. This paper investigates a series of interviews with international office staff to examine the methods they use to recruit international students, and in particular the relationship that they have with international education agents who work with them on a commission basis. It focuses on recent changes to the UK visa system which have led to a decline in the numbers of Indian students choosing to study towards a UK higher education. However, it also reveals that some universities have managed to avoid this trend. This paper investigates why this is the case, demonstrating that there is a need to think about the intersections between migration industries, visa regulations and international student mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• International student mobility
• international education agents
• student recruitment
• migration reform

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Carl Griffin for his comments on earlier versions of this paper and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback. Thanks are also due to Sophie Cranston, Joris Schapendonk and Ernst Spaan, the editors of this special issue, for all their work in putting it together.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 EU policy states that any incoming students from elsewhere in the EU must be treated as local students, so there is no opportunity for variable fees.

2 The devolved Scottish Parliament has debated at length the need to reinstate the policy, citing significant losses in international student numbers and therefore significant financial losses, not only to the sector but to the economy more generally (BBC 2016).