Today’s ICEF Monitor post looks at the findings of several new reports as they relate to trends in participating EU countries’ efforts to attract international students – including work and immigration policies, which are frequently viewed as key elements of a study abroad nation’s competitiveness.

A decade of growth

According to a new report from the European Migration Network (EMN), a body of the European Commission, the number of international students in Europe increased by roughly 114% from 2000 to 2010 – a substantially higher rate than the growth of international students in North America, which was estimated at roughly 55%.

The EMN report, entitled “Immigration of International Students to the EU,” was based on contributions from 25 countries including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Norway.

International students a substantial part of many EU populations

Overall, the EMN report found that international students compose an important proportion of the non-EU population in many EU countries: 21% of all new first residence permits in the report’s participating countries were issued for education reasons.

Despite many countries’ efforts to facilitate the entry of Erasmus students (students from the EU going to other EU countries to study), the report notes that only “1.4% of the total number of first permits issued in Member States in 2011 for the purpose of study” were given to students coming under the high-profile Erasmus mobility programme.

National strategies in use to attract foreign students

In terms of the national strategic goals for wanting to attract international students, the report listed two:

• Attracting skilled students (mostly master and doctoral students) within a wider policy context of attracting highly skilled workers to meet skills shortages in national labour markets;
• Attracting international students for national economies to benefit from the revenue streams associated with these students (e.g., fees, living expenses, etc.).

Strategies used to attract foreign students vary from country to country, and may include:

• Marketing programmes to promote the country as an attractive destination and to provide information to students on available courses and services;
• Scholarship and funding opportunities, often tailored to students from countries with which the host country has a bilateral agreement in place;
• More recently, the introduction or augmentation of English-language courses (already prevalent in The Netherlands and Sweden, others are now prioritising English-medium instruction, including Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and Spain);
• Flexible admission procedures;
• Providing freer than usual access to the labour market (e.g., number of hours allowed to work) – but the report noted this was often restricted to low-skilled sectors rather than in sectors that would allow the student to build his/her professional network and expertise;
• Ability to apply for work permits without leaving the country, and even the ability to be self-employed as entrepreneurs.

Many of the countries participating in the study are putting the focus on attracting the “brightest and the best” students … “mostly masters and PhD students who contribute to the knowledge base of specific sectors important to the economy.”

Some (Finland, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Spain) are setting clear targets for the number of international students they want to attract (e.g., Finland wants to increase the number of foreign degree students by approximately 77% from 11,303 in 2007 to 20,000 in 2015, and Spain is looking to boost its international student population from 4.9% in 2012 to 10% in 2015).

Meanwhile, some are targeting specific countries for international students (e.g., France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands are prioritising BRIC nations, and Portugal favours Portuguese-speaking countries).

And others plan to amend their policies on international students. For example, The Netherlands intends to more effectively prevent “misuse of the student route” by setting targets for students and collecting biometric data during the visa application process. “Poland intends to introduce preferential admission and stay regulations for international students and university graduates.”

Hungary and Latvia appear to be the only countries without a national policy on international students. In Latvia, each institution determines its own needs and strategies for attracting foreign students. “In Hungary, only an action plan is in place which aims to strengthen the education of ethnic Hungarians living outside the territory of Hungary.”

Survey reveals current internationalisation strategies

Meanwhile, on the subject of strategies, a recent survey on the state of internationalisation in higher education by the European University Association (EUA) of 175 HE institutions in 38 countries found that “more than half (56%) have an internationalisation strategy in place and a further 13% intend to develop one or have considered internationalisation in other strategies.”

The survey revealed the following internationalisation strategies currently used by HE institutions:

• development of new partnerships with new regions and countries (73%);
• sending more students abroad (72%);
• growing the international student population (68%);
• offering international opportunities to staff (67%);
• offering more courses in English (67%);
• developing double and joint degrees (61%).

The survey found that the most popular priorities for action were:

• attracting students from abroad (30%);
• internationalisation of learning and teaching (19%);
• providing students with more opportunities to have a learning experience abroad (12%);
• strategic research partnerships (10%).

Three variations in university-level promotional efforts

In order to execute some of these strategies, universities in EU countries may be conducting their marketing…

• by themselves – often via scholarships or including offers of free or discounted services. For example, the EMN report notes that the University of Luxembourg provides free lodging to Chinese students.
• with another institution. The EMN report provides the example of the Spanish-Moroccan cross-border campus between the University of Cadiz and Abdelmalek Essaâdi University.
• in collaboration with the university sector in the country as a whole. For example, in The Netherlands there is a Code of Conduct agreed to by the joint institutions of higher education that is promoted to international students to signal a sector-wide commitment to excellent education for international students.

Waving the job flag

The EMN report assesses that there are two types of policies in place in the participating EU countries regarding employment after graduation for international students:

• Member states that only allow international students to stay if they have a job or are continuously employed (Belgium, Cyprus, Spain, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovak Republic, Sweden, and United Kingdom);
• Member states that allow international student graduates to stay in order to search for a job (Austria, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Norway).

An example of the impact of the second type of policy – allowing international students to remain in the country post-graduation to find work – can be found in Finland, which allows international students to remain to seek employment for a period of six months after graduation. In 2007, 73% of foreign students who remained in Finland found work.

For further details on this topic, please see our article from last year, which gives an overview of the intentions of 6,200+ international students at 25 universities in Germany, France, the UK, Netherlands, and Sweden.

The economic contribution of international students

Despite the economic contribution of international students, actual revenues realised thanks to foreign students vary due to the different types of educational systems across the countries. Some, for example, offer free access to education and low student fees.

The EMN report provided a table that shows the sources of international student revenues for select participating countries:

Source: EMN’s “Immigration of International Students to the EU” report

Immigration prospects important to study market attractiveness

Right at the outset, EMN’s report makes it clear that increasingly, the countries that provided data for the study are well aware of international students’ potential to remain in the country and add needed workforce skills.

And it moves on to declare: “States with a more flexible policy [on allowing international students to work during and after study] might be considered as more ‘attractive’.”

It seems, from the growing number of non-EU international students choosing EU countries to study in, that both national-level and institutional-level strategies are on the whole working well to attract students from outside the EU.

Looking for room for improvement, the report concludes:

“The overall aim of improving EU and national strategies and policies is to ensure that the EU can be considered as a world centre for excellence in education.

Further legislative action at the EU level, aiming to provide for further improvements in admission conditions, rights during stay, including mobility, and ensuring safeguards for third-country nationals, in line with Treaty objectives, is likely to make an important contribution to delivering this objective.”

Tourism sector a signal of Europe’s strength

The EMN report and EUA survey arrive at the same time as two more pieces of research; the first being the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO) new “World Tourism Barometer.” Results show that international tourist arrivals in Europe were up by 3% in 2012, a “very positive result in view of the economic situation.”

UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai said of the modest growth in European tourist arrivals: “2012 saw continued economic volatility around the globe, particularly in the Eurozone. Yet international tourism managed to stay on course.

The sector has shown its capacity to adjust to the changing market conditions and, although at a slightly more modest rate, is expected to continue expanding in 2013.

Tourism is thus one of the pillars that should be supported by governments around the world as part of the solution to stimulating economic growth.”

Zeroing in on the continent, the European Travel Commission’s (ETC) latest “European Tourism in 2013: Trends & Prospects” report indicates that “international arrivals and nights to Europe for the first quarter of 2013 point to a slower, but continued growth for most of the reporting destinations.”

Like tourism, international education seems relatively resistant to shocks to the overall economy, but as emerging economies and developing markets continue to advance in both sectors, Europe will need to fight harder to remain a competitive and attractive destination.

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As highlighted on ICEF Monitor last year, online education is rapidly expanding in numerous countries, with the US leading the way. But other nations are exploring the model, and today’s article will examine international developments in the specific area of MOOCs, with a focus on countries where the technology is beginning to flourish.

MOOCs and international recruiting

Speaking at this year’s Going Global conference in Dubai, British parliamentarian and Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts directly addressed the effect of online education on international recruitment by suggesting the technology could “weaken the power of agents.”

Willetts was speaking specifically about British universities that traditionally rely upon international recruitment, but his comments could apply to recruiters from any country. In light of such of bold public pronouncement, just how far along are MOOCs on the international scene?

Asia’s first MOOCs

MOOCs are no longer solely the province of American institutions. Just this month, Naubahar Sharif of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) launched what was dubbed “Asia’s first MOOC” on Coursera: an online course entitled “Science, Technology and Society in China.” Sharif expected 8,000-10,000 students for the three-week course, but 17,000 registered.

In addition, China’s first cross-university online course debuted last month when Professor Wang Defeng of Fudan University taught an introductory philosophy class to 1,072 students from 30 schools across Shanghai. While not a true MOOC in the sense that it was not open to global registrants, it made use of the basic model, and follows a trend of Chinese universities trying to offer wider access to top universities’ resources.

And in Japan, the University of Tokyo, or Todai, signed an agreement with MOOC developer Coursera to create a September course on the evolution of the universe, followed by an October offering on peace and conflict. Both of these courses will be taught in English.

Coursera’s additional partners in Asia include The Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, and the National University of Singapore.

Meanwhile in India, Carnegie Mellon University professors Raj Chakrabarti and Anisha Ghosh are running the Academic Financial Trading Platform (AFTP), which calls itself the first MOOC dedicated exclusively to business education, with the specific goal of teaching skills that facilitate business decision-making.

While many AFTP participants have been MBA students and executives, the website touts the course as being for the average investor. It promises no less than to deliver, “for the first time, fully automated and transparent quantitative stock market prediction techniques and trading strategies, developed at the world’s top research centres.”

Non-English MOOCs on the rise

Naubahar Sharif, when assessing his Hong Kong MOOC, said that about 60% of the enrolees were from the US, UK, Canada and other developed nations. The remainder of the participants came from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and middle-income Asian countries. Some of those Asian participants were from China, but with language still a barrier in online education, China is currently only the tenth largest market for MOOCs – though it has 22% of the world’s Internet users.

Coursera has addressed this language gap by offering courses conducted in Chinese, but the Chinese government – according to rumour, at least – is moving toward developing its own MOOC platform, with potentially far-reaching effects on student mobility patterns from one of the world’s leading sending markets.

The Chinese effort, if true, comes as no surprise. Concerns have been expressed about MOOCs’ domination by US developers, the one-way transfer of educational content from rich nations to poorer nations, and the cultural damage that could occur in the wake of “a wave of intellectual neo-colonialism.”

Sun Maosong of Tsinghua University put it bluntly to Xinhua News Agency: “Chinese courses need to be made in China, not America.”

It’s massive but is it tailoured?

If one of the strengths behind MOOCs is their ability to educate the masses, it is also one of their weaknesses.

Today’s trend experts tell us that the more a product or service can be tailoured to an individual, the better. This is certainly true for millenials, and personalised learning is no different. So it will be especially interesting to see how MOOCs adapt to different people’s needs, cultures, languages, nationalities, and socioeconomic status.

Armando Fox, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley and teacher on an edX course, told Inside Higher Ed that one of his students is “working on a dashboard for MOOC instructors to analyse subpopulations of MOOC users to see if instructors can spot differences based on users’ locations, something edX can detect automatically using users’ IP addresses.”

“Ultimately, Fox said edX might be able to use this data or even collect more (like information on income) from users and then create classes tailoured to different student populations.”

“You can imagine different pathways through course material where a student might not necessarily follow every pathway,” he said.

Europe’s first MOOCs

Moving along, we come to Europe, where partnerships with MOOC developers are popping up everywhere. The latest is in Denmark, where the 500-year-old University of Copenhagen plans to offer four Coursera MOOCs, for which more than 40,000 students have registered and as many as 100,000 are expected. Other European universities linking up with Coursera include:

• Ecole Polytechnique, France
• Edinburgh University, Scotland
• IE Business School, Spain
• Leiden University, The Netherlands
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich, Germany
• Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy
• Technical University of Denmark
• Technical University Munich, Germany
• University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• University of Geneva, Switzerland
• University of Helsinki, Finland
• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• The University of London, England

In addition to university partners, Coursera has also announced a collaboration pilot with Russian tech centre Digital October to bring more courses to Russian-speaking students, via translated subtitles and in-person meet-ups.

The not-for-profit MOOC developer edX has also expanded on the continent, doubling the size of its institutional membership. Among its new partners in Europe are École Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Delft University of Technology in Delft, The Netherlands.

Homegrown European MOOC platforms

As of December 2012, the UK has a massive open online course platform developed on its own shores in the form of Futurelearn. So far, 17 British universities, including King’s College London, Cardiff University, and Queen’s University Belfast have signed up to offer courses with the new company, along with non-university partners the British Library and the British Council.

Futurelearn CEO Simon Nelson is boldly talking about his platform expanding beyond learning. He envisions it becoming an entire social networking site. He told Times Higher Education, “It may sound ridiculous in ambition, but … in five or ten years, rather than hanging out on Facebook, people will feel they can hang around in the Futurelearn product.”

Germany has also joined in the MOOC movement with the development of OpenHPI, an educational internet platform developed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Potsdam. Conducting courses in both German and English, part of OpenHPI’s courses are aimed at a general audience, while others are geared towards Information and Communications Technology (ICT) professionals.

Not only are independent MOOC developers appearing in Europe, countries from the entire region have now joined forces.

Eleven nations (France, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, UK, Russia, Turkey, and Israel) supported by the European Commission and led by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) banded together to launch OpenupEd, the first pan-European MOOC initiative.

Courses are to be taught in twelve languages and are broad-ranging in subject matter, encompassing disciplines such as mathematics, economics, e-commerce, climate change, cultural heritage, corporate social responsibility, Middle East studies, language learning, and creative writing.

Unfortunately, the OpenupEd launch webinar struggled due to technical issues, but EADTU President Will Swann has said that the technology that failed is not part of OpenupEd, and is promising that the MOOC will flourish.

“We aim at growing with an ever-expanding range of courses from our partners, and we will welcome new partners from across the world who share our vision and practice of flexible, responsive higher education.”

The European Commission also has a hand in Academy Cube, an open education platform from Germany’s SAP software company aimed at teaching IT skills and matching students with job vacancies. With high youth unemployment in Europe yet up to a million job openings, the initiative hopes to bridge the skills-employment gap.

Along with SAP, the MOOC has support from Microsoft, Linkedln, Software AC, Thyssen Krupp, and the German Federal Employment Agency and academic institutions. Initially, Academy Cube will get a trial run only in Spain, but the creators of the project believe it may produce MOOCs or MOOC-like learning opportunities across Europe.

Australia’s own platform

MOOC provider edX has partnered with The Australian National University, but Australia also has its own MOOC platform, Open2Study, developed by Open Universities Australia. Open2Study and Open Universities Australia both offer online classes, but differ in that Open2Study offers free, non-certification classes whereas OUA provides access to accredited Australian university and TAFE (vocational) qualifications.

In part one of this article, we asked whether MOOCs will push students into core university programmes or draw them away. Open2Study aims specifically to do the former. Paul Wappet, CEO of Open Universities Australia, has said that Open2Study is designed to let students “taste what is available, getting them familiar with higher learning, so they can build the confidence to go onto further study.”

Africa’s potential

The overall technological surge in Africa has affected the realm of online education.

The African Management Initiative (AMI) is developing what they call the first MOOC designed by Africans for Africans. Their goal is to deliver business and management education for free to small business owners and young managers across Africa through a model that blends online content with offline peer-led learning.

AMI hopes to partner with business schools, and is seeking grant funding to develop and launch a full course which they hope can draw enrolees in the thousands. The AMI MOOC is part of a larger plan for the AMI Virtual Campus, a free online platform that plans to “leapfrog traditional bricks-and-mortar training by driving practical, personalised learning and development for African managers and entrepreneurs on an ongoing basis.”

Upward march for MOOCs

With the exception of MOOC mega-advocates like Sebastian Thrun, most developers are circumspect about a potential threat to traditional universities. At the moment, as discussed in Part 1, the possibility of earning credits is rare but expanding. And the process of building MOOCs necessarily involves building the architecture to enable a credit-bearing model.

Objections to credit-bearing MOOCs are substantive, and range from them offering a watered down curriculum, to them creating a breed of superstar professors with outside influence, to them being an excuse for political hardliners to gut public education budgets.

But do all the obstacles mean MOOCs won’t disrupt the standard educational model? Not necessarily.

In a February article in the tech trends publication Wired, authors Michael Horn and Clayton Christensen looked at MOOCs from the framework of historical innovation, and pointed out that continued refinement of the model could create a tipping point where it is broadly seen as a legitimate alternative to existing models. One important observation was:

”Disruptive innovations improve over time to march upmarket. Eventually the quality becomes just good enough for the established customers to flock to it. It’s worth noting that the upmarket march is enabled by some key technology – such as bandwidth, video quality, online sharing tools – which is why MOOCs may now be having their moment, even though they’ve been around for years.”

An upmarket march for MOOCs would involve not just technology, but class credit, a healthy revenue model, and global expansion as well. All of which is already beginning to occur.

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“Coming to the EU for research or study is far more difficult than it should be,” said EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström. “We have to remove these obstacles to make the EU more open to talents. Such mobility benefits the EU and our economy through the circulation of knowledge and ideas.”

The European Commission’s statement on the proposed legislation continues:

“Moving to Europe temporarily is an opportunity embraced by over 200,000 students and researchers from outside the EU every year. However, far too many of them have to face unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles. Current rules for obtaining a student visa or a residence permit are often complex and unclear; procedures can be lengthy and vary considerably across Member States and moving from one Member State to another can be very difficult or even impossible. This hampers the possibility to provide EU countries with a greater pool of talent and reduces the appeal of the EU as a world centre for excellence.”

The Commission expects to have new legislation arising from its current proposal in place by 2016, and in so doing to set out “clearer, more consistent and transparent rules across the EU.” Major components of the proposed legislation include:

• Procedural guarantees, most notably a requirement that Member States process visa or residence permit applications within 60 days in order to “make the application process more straightforward and transparent.”
• “Simpler and more flexible rules” to make it easier for students and scholars to move between Member States – an item of particular interest for those engaged in joint programmes that cross national borders.
• Students will be allowed to work for 20 hours or more per week. Under some conditions, international students and scholars will also be allowed to “identify job opportunities or set up a business.”
• Protection for additional groups of non-EU nationals, such as au pairs, school pupils and remunerated trainees, who are not addressed under existing EU legislation.

Having grown from a founding group of 6 countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands – the European Union is now an economic and political union composed of 27 member states.

The European Commission reports that “around 220,000 non-EU nationals entered the EU for the purposes of studies, pupils exchange, un-remunerated training or voluntary service” in 2011, as did 7,000 non-EU researchers. In 2011, the top receiving Member States for non-EU students were France (64,794), Spain (35,037), Italy (30,260), Germany (27,568), and the Netherlands (10,701).

Investing in education and technology

The EU’s new legislative proposals appear against a backdrop of significant funding challenges for European education, and reflect as well a renewed drive within Europe to close some persistent gaps in high-value, high-demand sectors of an increasingly digital economy.

A recent study of education spending in 25 Member States found that education budgets in the EU are feeling the strain of ongoing austerity measures across Europe. As the accompanying report notes:

“The financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the consequent economic downturn have had a huge impact on public finances in all European Union countries over the last 5 years. Increasing public deficits and the level of public debt raised fears about the sustainability of public finance in the European Union. This situation led the European Commission and Member States to take strong actions to stabilise and then consolidate their fiscal situation.”

The study analysed funding at all levels of education, from pre-primary to tertiary level, and found that investments in education have fallen in 8 out of the 25 countries since 2010. In a related media statement, the European Commission notes, “Cuts of more than 5% were imposed in Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania and Portugal, while Estonia, Poland, Spain and the UK (Scotland) saw decreases of 1 to 5%.”

“These are difficult times for national treasuries but we need a consistent approach on public investment in education and training because this holds the key to the future of our young people and a long-term sustainable economic recovery,” said Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. “If Member States fail to invest properly in modernising education and skills, we will fall further behind our global competitors and find it harder to tackle youth unemployment.”

Commissioner Vassiliou picked up on this important theme in a recent speech to an information and communications technology (ICT) job conference in Brussels.

“Digital competence has become a core skill that everyone should be learning at school – it is essential to our economic growth and to people’s employability and inclusion in society. Almost unnoticed at a time of financial trouble and economic slowdown, there is a silent crisis that is calling into question our ability to bring about a better future. A gap is growing between the skills that many new jobs require and the number of people who have those skills. The gap is wider for jobs that require mathematical, computing and technical skills.

A fundamental re-shaping of our economies is taking place. The pace of change is quickening, and we are not keeping abreast. In Europe, we have more than 1 out of 5 young people jobless and over 2 million job vacancies unfilled. For unfilled digital jobs, we are looking at a situation where there is barely 1 ICT graduate for 3 digital jobs. This is putting Europe at a growing disadvantage with other parts of the world. This is not just a missed opportunity; it is a direct threat to our future prosperity.”

The Commissioner’s remarks reflect broader EU initiatives to invest in ICT training, including the maintenance or expansion of funding for ICT programmes and the recruitment and development of ICT and STEM educators at all levels.

In her remarks, the Commissioner noted as well the priority placed on ICT training by the European Commission and that, “We are committed to using more of the Union’s budget to support the Member States in their effort to provide education and training that teaches skills for employability.”

As evidence of this commitment, she cited the EU’s Lifelong Learning programme. Lifelong Learning has a current budget of nearly €7 billion for 2007 to 2013 and is currently funding a range of activities to promote ICT in education, including the Erasmus mobility programme. This programme is set for a major expansion under the proposed “Erasmus for All” plan for 2014–2020 and “will support even more actions for developing e-literacy, creativity and open education.”

Commissioner Vassiliou also pointed to the EU’s forthcoming “Opening up Education” initiative to be introduced later this year. It will “examine how Member States can maximise the contribution from new technologies [and] look at new learning pathways, new resources as well as a new generation of educational providers.”

It seems clear from all of these recent developments that even in a period of austerity, Europe continues to look to education – to an increasingly international, open, and technology-oriented education system in particular – as a major pillar of social and economic development. As is always the case, the key to realising this potential will lie in the EU’s ability to develop effective policy, to harmonise policies across its Member States, and to sustain its current and planned investments in education at all levels.

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International school enrolment by the numbers

Researchers Mary Hayden and Jeff Thompson noted in their authoritative 2008 paper “International Schools: Growth and Influence” that it is difficult to know how many international schools exist at any given time. There was even disagreement on what constituted one. But in the broadest sense, an international school follows a curriculum different from that of the country in which it resides.

Nicholas Brummitt, founder and managing director of International School Consultancy (ISC) Research Ltd., unveiled research pegging the total number of English-medium international schools at 6,533.

Not only are new schools continually opening, but their ranks also grow whenever existing schools convert to an international curriculum, begin instruction using a foreign language (usually English), or open a satellite campus in another country. The rate of growth for 2011-2012 was 6.7%, and the twelve-year expansion rate has been an astounding 153%.

Such massive growth defies current economic trends but seems set to continue. Brummit predicted at the most recent International Schools and Private Education Forum:

“Based upon the continuing market demand, within 10 years (by 2022), the number of international schools will expand to 11,331, the number of students will increase to 6.2 million, the number of staff to 529,000, and the annual fee income will reach almost US $60 billion.”

Right now, there are 20 countries that contain 100 or more international schools. United Arab Emirates contains 391 by itself (at the time of writing). Of the global total, 54% of international schools are operating in Asia. Below is a partial global tally of the number of schools in some of the top nations around the world:

Asia and Middle East
• 391 international schools in United Arab Emirates
• 346 international schools in Pakistan
• 342 international schools in China
• 320 international schools in India
• 221 international schools in Japan
• 181 international schools in Saudi Arabia
• 174 international schools in Indonesia
• 168 international schools in Hong Kong SAR
• 164 international schools in Thailand
• 119 international schools in Qatar
• 112 international schools in Malaysia

Europe
• 190 international schools in Spain
• 174 international schools in Germany
• 148 international schools in Netherlands
• 103 international schools in France
• 100 international schools in Switzerland
• 98 international schools in Sweden
• 43 international schools in United Kingdom

Africa
• 159 international schools in Egypt
• 105 international schools in Nigeria

Americas
• 146 international schools in Argentina
• 113 international schools in Mexico
• 75 international schools in Brazil
• 55 international schools in the United States
• 46 international schools in Colombia

Oceania
• 71 international schools in Australia
• 42 international schools in New Zealand

Of course, international schools tend to thrive in countries where English is not the native language, particularly due to demand from expatriate families, however enrolment is still robust at such schools in the US and the UK. Michael Graham, a researcher at ISC, shared their figures with ICEF Monitor as follows:

“According to our records, there are 18,700 students studying at international schools in the UK and 27,300 in the USA. However a substantial number of those students at UK schools are UK citizens and a substantial number of those students at US schools are US citizens; they just happen to be studying at schools which are classified as international schools. Furthermore, there are a lot of international students in the UK who aren’t studying at international schools.”

While English-language instruction predominates at international schools, it’s worth noting that other countries have a presence in the market as well. France is one example. Entirely French instruction is offered at institutions like École Française Internationale in Canton, China, École internationale de Carthage in Tunisia, and Lycée Marguerite Duras in Vietnam. There are also French international schools that teach bilingually in English and French in the UK and US.

Over the past four years the international school market has seen not just explosive growth, but rapid evolution, as a larger number of institutions are run for profit, corporate involvement has increased, and there has been an increased consumer demand for digital delivery.

Demographic growth drivers

International schools arose as a method for educating the children of internationally mobile families, and as recently as 30 years ago places at such institutions were still filled by a high percentage of expatriates. That trend has totally reversed. Today, locally born residents fill about 80% of spaces in international schools and drive about two thirds of the market expansion.

But in some places, expatriates are making their presence felt. With more than 15,000 British and almost 30,000 American expats living in Hong Kong after a recent influx, international schools there have struggled to find enough places for students, this despite the presence of 168 schools on the island.

Brummitt cited both local and expat influence on growth in a November interview with Re:locate Magazine:

“The next ten years will, without doubt, see dramatic growth in the international schools market, and this demand continues to come from the expanding expatriate market and the increasing number of wealthy local families who are recognising the benefits of an English-medium education for their children.”

The growth Brummitt mentioned is easy to track. Consider the 342 international schools in China, as noted above. Now for a fuller picture, consider the fact that 12 years ago there were only 22.

In Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and elsewhere, government funded efforts have resulted in the development of entire international education hubs.

Malaysia provides an example of coordinated governmental effort on this front. The Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education hopes to attract at least 200,000 international students to the country’s English-language EduCity hub by the year 2020. To that end, the government formulated an Economic Transformation Programme, which consists of regulatory changes and a package of tax incentives. Companies that establish new international schools, or existing international schools that undertake expansion, are eligible to apply for an investment tax allowance of 100% on the qualifying capital expenditure incurred within a period of five years.

Other types of growth drivers

Demographics is one driver, and tightly linked to that is profit. China’s Oxford International College, to raise one example, charges as much as 260,000 Renminbi – about US $42,000 – for one year of prep-style classes. Profit potential in Asia helped draw a number of Western preparatory schools and universities east. Globally, there are now more than 200 international branch universities granting degrees.

The entire international school market is thought to be worth just north of US $30 billion. As noted above, Brummitt predicts that, if the current trend holds, annual fee income could hit US $37 billion by 2015, and US $60 billion by the year 2022.

Yet a third driver for international school growth is their perceived role in feeding talent into the host nation’s economy. While primary and secondary level international schooling is often seen by families in developing nations as a precursor to university overseas, governments are promoting international schooling as a way to fight brain drain by keeping bright students in country.

Prices are up and spaces are down

ISC Research points out that international schools cater to the richest 5% of the non-English speaking world. That will remain true for a while, since fees have been rising across the board due to insufficient places at international primary and secondary schools. The crunch has hit both locals and expats. In Malaysia waiting lists are common, and in Hong Kong some expatriate families have left due to lack of places, according to the Telegraph.

Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha also are all currently facing pressure for school places. According to a more recent article, the problem is so bad that some expatriate families are demanding security of school places before accepting new job placements.

Places are so coveted that parents have even resorted to fraud. In November 2012 in South Korea, 47 parents were charged with admission fraud at international schools. Because South Korean students can only be enrolled at international schools if one of their parents is a foreign national, parents had obtained fake documentation from as far away as Latin America and Africa.

In a compliance-related move, the South Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced in October that it would audit all existing international schools to determine if students were taught who failed to meet enrolment requirements.

Quality fueling the growing trend

In any exploding market questions of quality can arise, but so far incidents have been rare.

Brummitt points out that, “The growing trend to send local children to international schools is based on the quality of teaching and learning that many of these schools provide, coupled with an understanding by local wealthier families of the value of an English-medium education.”

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Their annual 2012 survey of the Swiss market for language travel revealed increased interest in France, Malta, South America, and Italy as study destinations (see graph below).

Agents reported a rise in French demand from 10.2% to 12.5% (from 8.1% up to 10.5% in France and a consistent 2% in French-speaking Switzerland). Meanwhile, German market share also rose from 6.8% to 10%.

Language travel to English-speaking destinations still receives the highest demand, with the UK remaining the most popular destination with 21.5% market share. Overall though, interest in English language learning fell to 62.9% (compared to 67.8% in the previous year) with all major countries, particularly the US, taking a hit.

Malta was the only English-speaking country to see a gain, moving from 4.1% to 5.3% growth, keeping it safely ahead of Ireland and New Zealand, and only just behind Canada.

South America captured 1.1.% market growth, perhaps at the expense of Spain which saw a .5% dip, or perhaps due to an interest in Portuguese as well as Spanish.

SALTA president Mark Winkler explained that trends are shifting towards shorter breaks, with 4 week courses becoming the preference as opposed to 5.7 weeks in 2011. This trend towards slightly shorter trips is expected to continue, especially as adults are combining their holidays with a two-week language course, for example.

Due to career enhancement incentives, there is a growing interest in language stays abroad by adults over 50 years of age, especially in association with cultural activities.

Language courses are also becoming more popular as part of company training (from 3.8% to 5.8%), but also for gap year experiences (from 8.4% to 12.3%).

Furthermore, language travel organisers saw a growing number of online bookings.

A love of languages

There are four national languages in Switzerland and according to the Federal Statistical Office, 63.7% of the population speaks German, 20.4% French, 6.5% Italian, and .5% Romansh. Speakers of Serbian/Croatian were the largest foreign language group, with 1.4% of the population, followed by English at 1%.

Industry players in Switzerland suspect the dip in English demand may likely continue due to the strength of the English being taught in local schools. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was always one of the other national languages, however, the move to promote primary school English came from Zurich’s head of education in the year 2000, as Switzerland began to adapt its education system to keep pace with globalisation and growing partnerships with other countries.

Interest in improving either French or German (depending on which canton a student is in) will naturally remain strong, as English becomes the second language taught in primary school but younger learners still need to study a second Swiss language as well.

Swiss international education sector relies heavily on Europe

This international flare continues to be seen in the university sector as well, though is more focused on exchanges within the European Union.

Each year, the ch Foundation prepares a quantitative analysis of school exchange activities. Compared with the figures for 2010/11, the statistics for 2011/12 reveal a significant increase in exchanges not only between the different language regions in Switzerland, but also with other European countries.

The percentages of international students at Swiss doctoral/research universities and universities of applied sciences are among the highest in the world. Statistics from 2010 revealed that a total of 131,524 students were enrolled at universities in Switzerland; of these 27% were international students and 16% studied at the doctoral level. Approximately 17% of bachelor students were foreign, 30% of masters students, and as many as 49% of all doctoral candidates came from abroad.

However, most of these international students come from other European countries, with Germany sending the lion’s share (10,000 students in 2011).

More background on the Swiss education sector can be found on crus.ch, swissworld.org or swissuniversity.ch which provides information for international students wanting to study in Switzerland and for universities seeking partnerships.

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If Facebook and Twitter were kids in a classroom, they might be feeling a little crowded and less dominant these days given the new popularity of some of their classmates: Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr.

These newer sites are captivating students the world over because of their highly visual interfaces – they are telling stories in seconds via photos and videos, and very compelling ones at that.

In this article, we’ll look at the rapid ascent of Tumblr, and see how education institutions might best use it to connect with students.

Effortless sharing

This is what Tumblr does, according to Tumblr:

“Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customise everything, from colours to your theme’s HTML.”

As far as we can see, Tumblr is a powerful hybrid of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, and Pinterest – it combines the best features of these and actually acts as an aggregator of their content (e.g., Tumblr users can easily bring in posts from the other sites).

Noelle Visani, on Higher Education Marketing, provides an excellent summary of what one can do on Tumblr (so excellent we are quoting liberally from her in this article – please check it out to see why). She says: “Just like Twitter, Tumblr works as a social media platform that allows you to:

• Update your status without being in your account, which means you can post from any other site or profile;
• Text your blog updates from any mobile phone;
• Use cross-blog tagging to curate content by tags, which is a great help in content discovery;
• Use a bookmarklet to share anything you come across while browsing the web.”

She notes that it’s free to start and just like WordPress (the popular blogging platform), “Tumblr enables you to:

• Customise your Tumblr site by creating your own custom theme;
• Be followed by other users;
• Tag your posts to make it easy for followers to see all your previous related posts;
• Easily add analytics tracking code to better understand your performance on the site;
• Allow users to comment (feature only available through Disqus).”

Show not tell

The adage “Show me, don’t tell me” is often used in fiction writing circles, but it is very appropriate here.

‘Showing’ via photos and video seems to be the way younger generations, including college-aged students, are preferring to communicate, and Tumblr responds beautifully to this.

So rather than tell you more about what Tumblr can do, we’ll show you via these examples Ms Visani provides to three colleges that are using their Tumblr sites to powerful effect (complete with her descriptions of them):

• Florida International University has one of the most complete Tumblr sites, which includes a search bar on the homepage, a featured Twitter feed, campus snapshots, and helpful Q&A between students and the university’s administrators:

• The Department of Admissions at University of Chicago uses Tumblr to reply to questions about admissions or about the school in general:

• Bennington College’s Tumblr account also features a search bar on their homepage and student-faculty Q&A, while also featuring students’ campus experiences:

To our eye, the first two are the better examples, simply because they are so visual. As soon as you look at one picture, you want to check out the next.

They also do a nice job of incorporating humour, which lends a great informal touch to the sites.

Both sites suggest that students are having a fantastic time at the universities even as they also post academic and administrative information.

And most importantly, they are communicating all these things lightning-fast; information is both addictive and digestible.

You could spend an enjoyable minute on each site… or 30.

Who is using Tumblr?

The main target audiences for colleges and universities are current and prospective students, and Tumblr’s demographics skew very young: most are under 30.

If you want to be where your students are, you may want to consider a Tumblr site. Tumblr is growing by leaps and bounds, and it is proving to be very engaging for students. According to Forbes:

“In November [Tumblr] shouldered its way into the top ten online destinations, edging out Microsoft’s Bing and drawing nearly 170 million visitors to its galaxy of user-created pages, according to the measurement firm Quantcast. Tumblr’s tens of millions of registered users create 120,000 new blogs every day, for a total of 86 million and counting, which drive some 18 billion page views per month.”

Here is another compelling stat about Tumblr:

“The amount of time that visitors spend on Tumblr averages around 2.4 hours a month, making it only second to Facebook in terms of user engagement.”

For more facts and figures on Tumblr, see our infographic below.

Should education institutions use Tumblr?

Search Engine Journal points out: “[On good Tumblr sites] content is very visual, eye-catching and quick to consume. If your product can fit into that mold, then Tumblr should be your next social media marketing channel to spread content and bring attention to your brand.”

For more great tips on how to use Tumblr effectively, Social Media Examiner offers advice on using humour, showing off your brand’s personality, and giving users an inside peek into your company or institution.

Therefore, education institutions thinking about a Tumblr site should be guided by four considerations:

• Tumblr is not for long posts;
• It should be very visual, maximising the use of photo and video;
• It should “show rather than tell,” including a principle of letting students’ excitement about your brand tell your story;
• It’s about embracing flexibility and a sense of fun – it gives your brand breathing room.

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The Label Qualité FLE (Qualité français langue étrangère) is a label for public and private centres located in France teaching French as a foreign language. It functions similarly to the British Council’s Accreditation Scheme and serves to identify, recognise and support learning centres that meet certain quality requirements.

The label is jointly award by three ministries: the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and the Ministry of Culture and Communication. A public administrative institution under the French Ministry of Education, the CIEP (Centre International d’Etudes Pédagogiques) manages the label.

The FLE label is a useful marketing tool for language centres, language travel agents, professional associations, and public organisations (i.e., embassies, consular institutions, French linguistic and cultural establishments abroad). It offers several benefits, such as:

• guarantees the quality of the services offered by a language centre;
• aids a school’s promotion in France and overseas by providing proof of national recognition;
• rallies school staff around a quality approach;
• unites the public and private sectors under one quality campaign
• offers a community of certified language centres committed to providing excellence in education;
• enables a school to leverage the support offered by the three aforementioned French ministries.

Institutional partners are closely involved in the promotion of the FLE label, particularly because certain consulates only grant visas to students attending accredited centres. FLE’s promotional network also includes a variety of professional groups such as Campus France for studies and Atout France for leisure in order to advance study abroad and language stays in France.

Becoming accredited

Close to 100 centres currently carry the FLE label, which was created in 2007 and is valid for four years. Now that many schools are undergoing their second round of auditing, the standards have become more strict, thus further strengthening the quality level.

A French as a foreign language centre wishing to acquiring the FLE label must meet the following criteria:

• The centre has a legal status and meets all the legal requirements related to that status;
• The centre can demonstrate that it has provided French as a foreign language courses for at least three consecutive years;
• If the centre’s activity is full-time, it must provide at least 2,400 hours of French as a foreign language teaching per year and employ permanent, full-time staff;
• If the centre functions on a part-time basis, it must provide at least 1,200 hours teaching per year over a 4-month period, with a monthly total greater than or equal to 300 hours. It must also employ at least one permanent staff member, either full-time or part-time.

Once the application has been accepted, two auditors visit the school: one to investigate pedagogy and one to evaluate administrative areas. Over the span of two to three days (approximately 30 to 40 hours per audit), the auditors focus on compliance with required standards in five main areas:

• welcome and reception;
• premises, facilities and equipment;
• management;
• teaching quality, staff training and benefits;
• courses.

The audit report is submitted to an inter-ministerial commission for recommendations and decision making.

The audit also serves as an ongoing improvement scheme for institutions, giving schools the opportunity to reflect on their strategies, practices and results, and reminding them to continually enhance their service offerings.

More information on the FLE label, including a list of participating language centres, can be found on their website.

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Each country module covers primary, secondary, and vocational schools as well as higher education.

Recruiters and admission officers of institutions may find them to be a useful resource when assessing the level of foreign students applying for a programme at their institution.

The country modules are also beneficial for anyone who seeks detailed information on a specific country’s education system or grading system, or examples of diplomas.

Understanding the education and grading system is also useful for students who are thinking about studying abroad. Prospective students can read in detail how education is organised overseas and they can get a first impression of what their diplomas are worth.

The country modules are available in English (and Dutch) and are freely accessible. They are updated regularly, with five new modules added each year.

At present, the following are online: Albania, Aruba, Austria, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, China, Croatia, Curaçao, St. Martin and BES islands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, International Baccalaureate, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Surinam, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam.

Please see the Nuffic website for all available country modules.

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Facebook and Twitter – with respectively, 966+ million and 500+ million active global users – are among the top ten most visited websites in the world. Facebook’s biggest countries in terms of penetration are the US, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico, while Twitter’s are the US, Brazil, Japan, UK, and Indonesia.

But at the EAIE’s “Social media for effective recruitment” seminar at the 2012 Dublin conference it became clear that engaging students on Facebook and Twitter may not be enough of a social media strategy for many universities and colleges. There are also local and/or regionally popular networks to consider, particularly for recruiters targeting markets where global social platforms are either not widely used (or available at all) or where there are significant local competitors.

A recent Times Higher Education article “Hashtag recruitment and the social network’s global reach” underscores the point that institutions will increasingly need to consider a balance of global and local or regional social channels.

“US social media do not penetrate all nations equally, however. Although 88% of Indian social media users log on to US-based platforms such as Facebook and Twitter daily or weekly, only 22% of Chinese users do the same, opting instead for local alternatives.”

Renren

Take, for example, the sole fact that Facebook has been blocked in China since 2008 (it happened just weeks after the service launched in the country).

This alone is enough to consider a presence on Renren (translated as “Everyone’s Website”), the Chinese equivalent of Facebook which has a huge following among college-aged students and which boasts 31 million users.

Of Renren, Wikipedia notes:

“At present, 32,000 universities and colleges, 56,000 high schools and 85,000 companies in China and 1,500 universities in 29 other countries are available on Renren’s confirmation system. The social networks for each of these specified colleges, schools and companies have been established.”

Vkontakte

Meanwhile, in Russia and Ukraine (and to a lesser extent Kazakhstan, Moldova, Belarus, and Israel), there’s Vkontakte, aka VK, which has an impressive 290 million users. Like Facebook, VK allows users to create groups, message contacts publicly or privately, access public pages and events, and share and tag images, audio, and video.

VK is massively more popular than Facebook in Russia; Facebook has only 3.6% penetration among Russians and those who are on it spend an average of only 13 minutes compared to 30 minutes with VK. MVF Global notes:

“It has been reported that one of the main possible reasons why Russians prefer Vkontakte to Facebook is the ability to easily upload and download films, video and audio files using the VK tracker application.”

Orkut

In the key markets of Brazil and India, Google-founded Orkut competes gamely with Facebook for users, and is especially attractive to males (68% of its user base). Unique to Orkut is that users can rate profiles based on “hotness” and “sexiness” (ahem, we are sure this has nothing to do with its popularity among male users). It has 66 million users, and is most popular in:

• Brazil (60.6% of users)
• India (17.3% of users)
• Japan (11% of users)

It also has a presence in the US, Russia, Pakistan, Portugal, the UK, Spain, and Italy.

While the “hotness” and “sexiness” features are obviously areas institutions will want to steer far, far clear of, one distinct Orkut feature that is very interesting to institutional marketers is the ‘promote’ tool that allows content to spread.

“When a person makes a promotion live, it will go to all the friends listed. Once these friends click on the ‘promote it’ button, then all of their friends will be able to see the promotion. This continues, allowing the promotion to spread throughout Orkut. Businesses can take advantage of this new feature to spread special promotions or even just spread the word of typical offers.”

The “hotness” features on Orkut illustrate an interesting aspect of any social media platform: it is always important for marketers to understand the nuances of user interaction and the context for that interaction before determining whether or how to engage.

Badoo

This is further illustrated by the case of Badoo, a social network with 152 million users, a spread of 180 countries, and impressive penetration in the important markets of Italy, Spain, France, and parts of Latin America.

Badoo offers the tempting prospect of a sizable and relevant audience. However, the platform has also been likened to “a chat room, dating site and picture rating site disguised as a social network” and has a bad reputation on the spam front. Blogger Daniel Stuckey comments:

“With its shiny presentation, sexualised premise and slick startup ploys, Badoo feels like a bizarre super-collider of radical honesty and spammy fakery ….. Within the first hour of becoming a new member, my spam box received an average of six new marketing e-mails per hour.”

Social media and recruitment

As international recruiters become more sophisticated and experienced in their use of social media, many will find their way to the optimal mix of social channels. Emerging best practice in the field provides a few basic touchstones for all recruiters:

• Be alert to opportunities to incorporate appropriate local or regional networks into your global strategy for social media.
• Activate the distinctive characteristics of social media – interaction, authenticity, sharing, recognition – in an effort to truly engage students via your social media marketing.
• Take time to learn how users engage with, communicate on, or otherwise interact with individual social platforms or tools, and reflect the lessons learned in your own approach.

For additional background on social networks and how to use them, you may want to review these recent ICEF Monitor articles:

• The ongoing interest in Pinterest… are you on board?
• The next wave of social media marketing: explosive growth in photo sharing
• How higher education uses social media
• Social media as a marketing tool – who does it best?
• New ways of marketing education with Twitter, Google+ and online reviews

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Taiwan, Ireland to implement working holiday programme for youth

Focus Taiwan has reported that Taiwan and Ireland will launch a reciprocal working holiday programme for youth starting 1 January 2013. (Editor’s note: as of 27 March 2013, 116 applications have been received and 97 authorisations have been granted.)

The programme will allow young adults between 18 and 30 years of age from each country to travel, work and participate in short-term training programmes, said Hsu Mien-sheng, Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs.

“Ireland is stepping up efforts to complete an online system” to process applications from young Taiwanese, Hsu said at a news briefing.

The working holiday programme between Taiwan and Ireland will allow an annual quota of 400 visas for young adults from each country for stays of up to one year for tourism, work or privately funded studies, he said.

Ireland is the eighth country to sign a working holiday agreement with Taiwan, following Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Taiwan will be the seventh country to participate in Ireland’s working holiday programme, after Argentina, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, according to the foreign ministry.

Overseas working holiday programmes have been well-received by young Taiwanese, with some 65,800 applications submitted to date, according to the foreign ministry.

Young people will be able to broaden their “international horizons through learning the language and gaining an in-depth understanding of the culture, society and lifestyle of the host country,” the statement read.

“It is believed that broader and closer exchanges under this programme will foster long-lasting friendship between the youth of Taiwan and Ireland,” the ministry added.

Taiwan is now in talks with other European countries, such as Belgium, to sign working holiday agreements, said a high-level foreign affairs official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, and most recently, France appears to be next in line.

Taiwan and France are likely to reach an agreement

Meanwhile, the Taipei Times announced that Taiwan and France are likely to reach an agreement on a reciprocal working holiday programme that will allow young adults from the two nations to travel and work in both countries.

French Senator Catherine Tasca, chairwoman of the French Senate’s Franco-Taiwan Friendship Group, said the procedure for reaching the agreement was still in progress and that certain barriers have been eliminated.

“Only some technical issues” remain to be resolved before both sides conclude the deal, but no date has been set for finalisation of the agreement, Hsu said.

Tasca added that the prospective agreement between Taiwan and France had the full support of the group.

Taiwan, which has made advancements in economics, culture, technology and research, as well as in its capabilities for innovation and invention, was an important partner for France, Tasca explained.

The working holiday programme could be instrumental in developing effective future relations between the younger generations of Taiwan and France, Tasca said.

Christophe Gigaudaut, head of the culture, education and science section at the French Office in Taipei, also expressed his confidence in the bilateral working holiday programme, stating that the programme might also help more Taiwanese students study in France.

Norway and Japan set working holiday plan

Japan Times reports that Japan and Norway will jointly launch a working holiday programme beginning 1 February 2013, aimed at enhancing exchanges between young adults, as announced by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his Norwegian counterpart, Jens Stoltenberg.

The exchange programme will allow Japanese and Norwegian people aged 18 to 30 to work on a short-term basis for up to one year even when they are staying in each other’s country for a holiday, the Foreign Ministry said.

Iceland’s youth petition for working holiday visa

The Australian Visa Bureau reports that a group of young Icelanders have launched a petition to request the country’s youth be granted access to Australia’s hugely popular working holiday visa programme, which allows people aged from 18 to 30 to live and work in Australia for up to a year.

The programme has proved extremely popular in recent years, yet despite Europe dominating the list of eligible countries (see end of article for full country list), Iceland is conspicuously absent. Members of the Nordic country’s younger population are making efforts to change that via a petition which they plan to present to the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the hope that an agreement can be reached with Australia.

The petition’s author, Ms Helgadóttir, who runs a backpacking travel website, says Icelanders are desperate to visit Australia but find their travelling options are limited due to visa policies.

Australian working holiday visa most popular in the world

It should come as no surprise that Iceland has set its sights on Australia; demand for the Australian working holiday visa eclipses all others.

In a speech to the Australian Tourism Directions Conference in Canberra earlier this week, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said over 220,000 Australian working holiday visas were issued in the last year.

“Today, Australia’s working holiday maker programme is one of the most popular and largest of its kind in the world – larger than our nearest competitors, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand combined – with reciprocal arrangements in place with 28 partner countries,” said the minister. (Editor’s note: see end of article for full country list which is now at 29 countries.)

“This highlights the overwhelming competitive strength and appeal of Australia. Since 2009, the number of working holiday maker visas we have issued has doubled. Indeed, there are more working holiday makers in Australia now than at any time previously – and demand is increasing.”

Mr Bowen says the contributions working holiday makers give to the Australian economy is crucial: “Certainly, research shows that working holiday makers provide valuable support to Australian employers and contribute positively to our economy.”

As ICEF Monitor reported in August, Greece became the latest country to be touted as the next partner in the programme and Mr Bowen said more agreements were in the pipeline, such as the expansion of the programme with Indonesia and ongoing negotiations towards arrangements with Uruguay and Mexico.

Editor’s note: The work and holiday (subclass 462) visa arrangement between Australia and Uruguay commenced on 1 April 2013. Under this versatile cultural enrichment programme, 200 university-educated Australians and Uruguayans, aged between 18 and 30, can now enjoy an extended holiday in each other’s countries for up to one year, during which they can also engage in short-term work and study. The scheme requires applicants to have government support, to hold or be studying towards university qualifications and to speak functional English.

Australia has also announced that they will also begin talks with the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Poland, and the Slovak Republic on establishing reciprocal work and holiday visa arrangements. Participants would be able to stay for up to 12 months and engage in short-term work and study during that time. Each arrangement would have an annual cap on visa grant numbers.

“The start of discussions for these new work and holiday arrangements recognises the value of Australia’s evolving bilateral relationships with these countries and will strengthen our cultural and people-to-people links,” Mr Bowen said.

The working holiday visa scheme into Australia continued to enjoyed its biggest year ever for the year ended June 2012 with 13.5% growth and over 180,000 first time visas granted plus a further 30,000 2nd year visas. Over time the scheme has grown at 8.5% compound year on year.

At the start of November, Tourism Australia announced its biggest ever marketing campaign aimed at bringing more backpackers on an Australian working holiday visa to the country. The announcement comes in the wake of the government’s intention to raise Australia visa prices across the board as of next year.

While the price of a working holiday visa is expected to increase by AUS $80 (£50), Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said he doubts the price increase will deter many young people from taking advantage of the excellent opportunities a working holiday offers.

Working holiday visa reciprocal arrangements

The reciprocal scheme provides working holiday rights to participants. The UK is the biggest market – over 35,000 young British travellers went to Australia on a working holiday visa last year alone, and a further 6,000 chose to extend their visas by an additional 12 months.

Following the UK, the top ten biggest numbers coming into Australia are from South Korea, Germany, Ireland, France, Taiwan, Italy, Japan, Canada and the USA, and with Hong Kong only just behind. Whilst the European countries make up the biggest numbers, the quickest growth in 2012 has come from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Australia’s working holiday visa programme (Subclass 417) is currently open to citizens of 19 countries:

• Belgium
• Canada
• Cyprus
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Hong Kong
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• South Korea
• Malta
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Sweden
• Taiwan
• UK

Australia also has the work and holiday visa programme (Subclass 462) which allows citizens from additional countries similar benefits:

• Argentina
• Bangladesh
• Chile
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Malaysia
• Thailand
• Turkey
• Uruguay
• USA

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