International students, export earnings and the demands of global justice

Abstract

Is it just to charge international students fees that are generally much higher than those paid by home and European Union students at UK universities? Exploring the ethical tension between universities’ avowed commitment to social justice on the one hand and selling education to foreign students at a premium on the other, we argue that increased global association and the reduced salience of the sovereign state make the education of international students an issue of global justice. If we view education as a global public good, the ethics of higher education provision call for reconsideration of both the current fee regime and of universities’ role in a competitive global economy.

Keywords:

• internationalisation
• higher education
• university fees
• global justice
• sovereignty
• knowledge as a public good

Notes

Notes

1. In spite of such developments, there is clearly a moral imperative to seriously reconsider universities’ internationalisation practices in a wider moral frame. Given the benefits they bring to the UK economy, are the curricula and forms of support provided to international students good enough? Are our curricula sufficiently international and do they provide home students with sufficient opportunity to acquire an understanding of the global context from which they benefit disproportionately by being British?

2. The authors grant that both EU and non-EU students contribute far more financially than they consume. They also point out that such students bring educational benefits by creating diverse learning environments, as well as fostering goodwill by placing graduates of the UK's universities in positions of influence abroad (Vickers and Bekhradnia 2007, point 52).

3. See http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/about/index.htm

4. See http://ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs/faqs/background/index_en.htm

5. Debate abounds on definitions for branch campuses but see, for example, Nottingham University with branch campuses in Malaysia and Ningbo, China, de Monfort, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) and see, too, Verbik (2007).

6. In April 2004 UK institutions were thought to be offering courses for 190,000 students in their own countries (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3640141.stm).

7. http://www.britishcouncil.org/eumd-pmi-history.htm

8. Examples of under the auspices of Universities UK include ‘The UK India Education and Research Initiative’ (UKIERI) and links with the England–Africa Partnership (EAP).

9. http://www.britishcouncil.org/eumd-pmi-about.htm

10. http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-pmi2-connect.htm

11. http://www.britishcouncil.org/eumd-pmi-uk-positioning.htm

12. http://www.britishcouncil.org/eumd-pmi-market-diversification.htm

13. See Naidoo 2007, 9, citing Hall (2001) on the ‘divide between high quality, high cost learning available to the elite, and standardised, low quality packages of information delivered at low cost with little interactivity or national relevance to many parts of the developing world’.

14. A recent BBC news report (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/britain-is-becoming-the-worlds-most-popular-destination-for-overseas-students-775915 html, Lucy Hodges, 31 January 2008) suggested that ‘while the US is still the global higher education “superpower”, China will soon be knocking it off top spot if current trends continue’ and noted that whilst, ‘… for now, Britain can still rely on the top class ratings of its best universities’ this global position was being threatened by universities overseas.