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

Academic benefits 
A successful and positive overseas study experience can provide a strong academic 
benefit to the mobile student, which will help prepare them for further studies or an 
academic career (Education Intelligence, 2013). Other academic benefits beyond subject 
knowledge might include increased inter-cultural understanding, the development of a 
‘global outlook’, improved academic-related language skills, contextualised knowledge, 
and exposure to different approaches to learning and assessment. However, these 
benefits are not always certain and a negative academic experience could result in 
damaging impact on a student’s personal and educational development. 
Host institutions can also benefit academically from inward mobility, through the 
contribution of international students to ‘internationalisation’ agendas (Knight, 2012). This 
is particularly the case in improving the possibilities for internationalisation ‘at home’ for 
local students unable or unwilling to travel overseas for study, and for staff who are more 
locally-orientated. Home students will interact with students from other countries, in both 
classroom and social settings, and an international student body may also facilitate 
adaptations of traditional teaching and learning approaches. This could be through 
curriculum development, modified teaching and learning practices, the integration of 
international perspectives into the learning process, and opportunities for students to 
develop inter-cultural competencies as they prepare for life in an increasingly globalised 
employment market.
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The Wider Benefits of International Higher Education in the UK 
ISM can also help HE institutions to improve their reputation through improved positions in 
international league tables which, in turn, may enhance their broader global reputation and 
thereby attractiveness to potential students, academics and research partners.
There is also an academic sustainability dimension to ISM, which is a strong motivator for 
the involvement of many host HEIs in international recruitment. In UK universities, foreign 
students made up 43% of the full-time postgraduate research body (HESA 2011/12) and 
are particularly concentrated in STEM-related disciplines. International student recruitment 
can help to sustain particular subject areas and programmes (which may be under short-
term threat due to low local demand), and help to develop strategic areas of research 
through the recruitment of highly skilled research students. A US study (Chellaraj et al., 
2008) has indicated that the presence of international students has a significant and 
positive impact on both future patent applications and patents awarded to institutions. 
Further US research (Black & Stephan, 2008) demonstrated the high impact of foreign-
born researchers in relation to science and engineering publications in leading journals. A 
2012 report (
‘Patent Pending: How Immigrants are Reinventing the American Economy’
) 
found that 76% of patents from the top 10 patent-generating universities in the US had a 
foreign-born inventor (almost all of which were in important STEM-related areas of 
research). Other studies have shown that foreign-born researchers working in US 
universities and with US-awarded doctoral degrees are more likely to develop future 
collaborative research with universities in their original country of origin than with other 
countries. The large numbers of Chinese, Indian and South Korean researchers now 
active in US universities may well result in a change in the geographic locus of US 
research partnerships.
Longer-term alumni relationships with overseas students may also support and facilitate 
international collaborative research and consultancy projects, which are becoming 
increasingly important to institutions (Technopolis, 2008). Some alumni retain research 
and teaching links with their alma mater during their careers, and such networks can also 
help to facilitate future international partnerships for teaching, research and student and 
staff exchange. 
Concerns have been voiced about the possible negative academic impact of inward 
mobility, particularly if some institutions become over-dependent on recruiting large 
numbers of international students (possibly due to difficulties in recruiting home students, 
or financial considerations). Conceivably this could even lead them to lower academic 
standards or language requirements. Should an HEI no longer be perceived as recruiting 
the ‘brightest and best’ students, there is likely to be significant reputational damage. 
Institutions (and host and source country governments) seek to avoid situations where 
particular programmes – or a campus as a whole – has an imbalance of students from 
particular countries or regions. This could impact negatively upon carefully developed 
reputations for diversity and academic quality in worldwide recruitment markets. For 
example, for periods in the 1990s, in topics such as business studies or Master’s degree 
programmes and with international students from Asia, this became a growing tendency. 
However, in most instances university awareness, and a move to ‘responsible’ recruitment 
and partnership development, has helped to improve the situation. 
Students could have negative study experiences in other ways, particularly if the reality 
fails to meet their expectations, through dilution or lack of academic or administrative 
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The Wider Benefits of International Higher Education in the UK 
support, and/or poor facilities that prevent them from being able to adapt to, and thrive in, 
their new academic and living environment. 
Academic benefits are not limited to individual host institutions but can be experienced by 
national HE sectors as a whole (The World Bank, 2002). It is possible for there to be 
enhanced overall reputational benefit for the country as well as a potential boost in 
national economic competitiveness due to the existence of a critical mass of ‘talented’ 
international students and researchers within the HE sector. 
Other academic benefits resulting from mobility might also be experienced in the student’s 
home country through the developmental and transformational impact of ‘high-quality’ 
international education and experience they might have following return home, and 
subsequent participation in economic, developmental and academic activities. However, 
those ‘home country’ benefits pre-suppose that the student returns, rather than remaining 
in the host country or using their mobility capital to live in another part of the world. There 
is evidence that this tends to be the case, for example 95% of Commonwealth Scholarship 
Commission survey respondents working in HE now worked or living in their home region 
(Day et al., 2009). However, there is a view that such brain ‘churn’ provides enrichment 
globally and that even those students who do not immediately return to their lower income 
countries might also enhance those economies through significant remittances to their 
families.