Bis research paper number 128 The wider benefits of international higher education in the uk

4.2.3.1 Research 
evidence 
Although relatively few of the alumni interviewed had already engaged in tangible business 
dealings with UK enterprises (A2) or with fellow HE alumni, more expected that they would 
do so in future, as well as with other contacts they had made while they had been in the 
UK. Those contacts were now part of alumni’s professional networks, based in the UK or 
anywhere globally. It is the potential for future economic benefit from commerce or other 
business collaboration through these contacts in the UK that makes this benefit important. 
The number of graduates reporting this potential was modest – perhaps 1 in 5 – but 
somewhat greater than the proportion who had conducted tangible business directly with 
the UK already. Examples included: 

Interviewee I4 who worked in film in India and had strong contacts through his fellow 
alumni from Bournemouth: 
“If I want to do something with UK, if I want to have a 
collaboration, I have classmates who are working in the same field over there right 
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The Wider Benefits of International Higher Education in the UK 
now; some of them have their own companies. And they are technically just a phone 
call away to arrange everything that I need in the UK, much [more] reliable business 
than something I would research over the internet”. 

I65 was a senior attorney specifically deployed by her employer – a law firm in the 
Dominican Republic – to work with and support UK companies considering investments 
in the region. 

Graduate I74 was marketing director for a multinational fashion retailer based in China 
and expected soon to start work with UK companies. 

I77 had her own PR agency in Bangladesh and had collaborators around the globe 
developed through the personal networks she created while at Middlesex. 

I99 worked as a lawyer in Turkey and had actively made links with the British expatriate 
community, promoted through the British Council, offering specialist services in relation 
to property acquisition and other legal issues.
Two alumni cited that they had a long-term aim to set up small consultancy firms with 
fellow alumni (in their UK scholarship schemes).
Amongst the strongest examples of professional networks were those reported by 
postgraduate research graduates who were pursuing academic careers. Personal contacts 
they had made during their research in the UK tended to sustain and could form the basis 
for new and future collaborative research projects, either between themselves and their 
former UK research supervisor and/or group, or with others with whom they had made 
contact or worked jointly: 

I48 was in the final stages of medical training at Harvard towards a specialised clinical 
and research career in oncology, built on the MB/PhD programme she undertook in 
Cambridge. She continued to collaborate with her former Cambridge lab and expected 
those research contacts to sustain into the future: 
“I’m also continuing to collaborate 
with the lab in Cambridge. So we’re still writing papers together and I Skype with them 
regularly. I still have a Masters student from the lab who is doing some experiments for 
me and we’re publishing something together.” 

I61 undertook a Masters in London and was now completing a PhD as well as having 
worked on projects with the British Council and RNIB for several years in her native 
Lebanon. She developed an international network of contacts while in London and 
anticipated a partnership with a university in Lebanon: 
“we worked on building an 
Arabic / Middle Eastern network to share stories and to share experience and 
knowledge and issues related to inclusive education… and to make it available in 
Arabic”
.

I1 had worked in research for the Indian government before undertaking a PhD at 
Southampton in grid computing. Now working in a university in India, he remained in 
touch with his supervisor, and former research colleagues had visited to foster