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.

The post Europe takes stock of its international student recruitment strategies appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

International students in Japan

Let’s first set the scene by providing the latest top-line statistics on Japan as a sending and receiving market.

Japan has fared better of late in the area of inbound internationals than in recent years. The education sector experienced a drop after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent radioactivity release at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Another downward driver had been the Yen’s high exchange rate against the Korean Won, but 2012 numbers were close to those from 2011.

The Japan Student Services Organization’s (JASSO) most recent figures for university undergraduate, junior college, technical college, graduate, professional training college, and university preparatory course students studying in Japan as of 1 May 2012 are as follows:

As a whole, the country’s tertiary sector received 137,756 students, only 0.2% fewer than in 2011.

Besides China and South Korea, other nations that sent fewer students to Japan in 2012 included Malaysia, Thailand, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Laos.

Below is a two-year regional breakdown of where Japan’s international students originate:

Japan as a sending market

The number of Japanese students flowing overseas has declined in recent years. The downward drivers are multifold, and include a flat economy, graduate unemployment, and changing demographics. The latter is a particular concern, and puts Japan in the same boat as other Asian regions such as South Korea and Taiwan. But Japan’s demographic shift is the most severe of the group.

Simply put, the Japanese government forecasts that the nation’s population could contract by 30% in the next half century, with negative effects in many areas of society, including international education. With Japanese citizenship and permanent residency still difficult for foreigners to obtain, there seems to be no easy way to bolster the country’s demographics.

Consider data from one of Japan’s largest receiving markets: the United States. In the US, traffic from Japan fell from 24,842 in 2009-2010 to 21,290 just a year later, totaling a drop of 14.3%. And in 2012, Japan registered a 6% drop. With so many factors at work inside Japan, it’s safe to say this was not mainly a demographic decline, but certainly fewer Japanese students will not help the overall situation.

However, nearby nations have seen more Japanese students arrive in recent years. Australia showed a 4.1% increase in Japanese student commencements in 2012, driven by growth in Australia’s vocational and English language education sectors. In New Zealand the number of Japanese students also rose in 2012, against an opposite trend of fewer overall student visa approvals.

Changes in the English Language Teaching (ELT) sector

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed what he calls a “three-arrow” approach to educational reform aimed at improving science and math scores in order to produce more PhDs in those areas, focusing more on IT education, and bolstering the English skills of Japanese students.

In the latter area, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is pushing for regulations requiring students to achieve a minimum TOEFL score before acceptance to universities, and also before graduation. The proposal is aimed to shift the current system away from writing and grammar proficiency toward functional English, but it has caused considerable debate in Japan.

Some opponents point out that even though more Japanese schools have already been offering TOEIC and TOEFL courses in recent years, students are not learning to speak English but rather to pass tests. They say the number of students who can successfully communicate in everyday English remains small, and is not likely to increase significantly even with minimum score requirements.

Part of the difficulty stems from English teachers themselves possessing lower proficiency in the language than needed, however the proposals address this shortcoming by calling not just for students to reach benchmarks (45 points or higher on the TOEFL test) but for teachers of English to score 80 or higher.

Hiring more foreign English speakers to teach the language has been suggested, but liberalising the current foreign teacher employment rules – under which native English speakers can be hired only as assistants, not full-time instructors – would likely be opposed by the Japanese teachers association Nikkyoso.

However, a proposal from the LDP aims to double the number of teachers hired for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program (from 4,360 in 2012 to 10,000) in three years. The teachers would be dispatched to all primary and secondary schools within ten years.

And it’s worth noting that foreigners are finding Japan a more fertile job environment than during the country’s more insular past. Foreign students are filling more openings after graduation – 8,586 of them in 2011, as opposed to the 2,689 that obtained work visas in 2000. Some are finding integration and acceptance a challenge, but an expanded job market is good news for internationals. Whether a similar hiring influx looms for the English education sector is undetermined.

Despite obstacles, Prime Minister Abe and LDP are pushing ahead with their reform package, which calls for ¥400 billion for English education restructuring. Pieces of the proposal will be included in LDP’s campaign pledges for the July 2013 Upper House election.

Shift in national enrolment schedule

One of the largest changes in Japanese education could be structural: universities could shift to a fall enrolment schedule. At the moment, the school year begins in April, which places Japan out of sync with international systems and may be yet another reason the country sends relatively few students overseas.

The University of Tokyo (Todai), the top institution in Japan according to Times Higher Education rankings, is at the forefront of this radical idea. Todai President Junichi Hamada hopes to achieve the transition within five years, and perhaps earlier. But there are still obstacles, including the opposition of nearly 40% of parents with children up to 18 years old.

Switching the system would be a huge undertaking, requiring a shift at all school levels from kindergarten up, and would involve giving students several months of potential idle time between April and September (on the upside, that time could be devoted to exchange programmes, summer camps, travel abroad, volunteering and internships). But the idea has momentum; the push by Todai has already caused Kyushu University and Kanazawa University to start discussions about a similar shift.

Initiatives in Japanese higher education

Under the Global 30 initiative, Japanese national universities pledged to lure 300,000 undergraduate international students to 30 schools by the year 2020, which would amount to 10% of the total student body. The original 2008 proposal was whittled down to 13 universities – all of which offer English-medium instruction – because of budget woes, but current government policies aim to expand the plan to 42 universities. If successful, this would be a massive influx of students, and recruiters should stay abreast of efforts to reach this goal.

On the outbound side, the Global 30 Plus programme and the Reinventing Japan project are aimed at encouraging Japanese students to study overseas. Tomohiro Yamano, deputy director general of the higher education bureau at the Ministry of Education, told Time late last year:

“The ultimate goal is tied in with improving Japan’s economy. More specifically, for Japanese graduates to work for Japanese companies that will do business around the world and become more successful.”

Japanese universities are generally ramping up efforts in student exchange, international recruitment, and overseas collaboration. Government policies encourage double degrees with Asian and US universities, as well as promoting university networks, particularly in science and technology. And in order to bolster its sending numbers, Japan is funding short-term international studies for 10,000 Japanese university students.

The government is also hoping the education sector receives a general boost in 2013 from a new Southeast Asia credit transfer arrangement to be adopted by all nations in the Greater Mekong Subregion (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and China, as well as Korea).

In addition to the credit transfer agreement, Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have created what they call the ASEAN-Japan Plan of Action, a joint initiative designed to:

• implement education programmes to nurture entrepreneurs, seminars to strengthen human resource development, and training courses to study skills and know-how on international business within ASEAN;
• promote Southeast Asian studies, including Southeast Asian languages, in various universities and other educational institutions;
• establish human resource development centres in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam to provide business education and Japanese language training;
• develop further educational exchanges under the ASEAN Universities Network (AUN) and the Universities Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP) initiative;
• expand access to basic education and improve the quality of education, recognising that basic education is the foundation of nation building.

Some other international linkages include:

• Earlier this year at the Abu Dhabi Japan Economic Forum, ten agreements and memoranda of understanding were signed between Abu Dhabi and Japan that impact upon the education sector.
• A new agreement was signed aimed toward African development, particularly in the education sector.
• Australia continues to look toward Japan for new education agreements.

Changes for domestic students

The Japanese government is looking at reforming its higher education sector via revised regulations that could limit the establishment of new universities and merge existing schools. With 75% of private universities falling short of enrolment targets, policy makers are focused on maintaining overall sustainability in the sector.

Heightened competition for a shrinking pool of prospective students has prompted private universities to restructure summer campus visit programmes. For example, Osaka University of Economics and Law now pays ¥15,000 (US $192) to those who visit the campus from distant reaches of Japan such as Hokkaido and Okinawa, and even students who visit from much nearer Tokyo can receive ¥7,000.

Meanwhile, at Hyogo University in Kakogawa, the ¥30,000 entrance exam has been discounted by one-third for candidates who visit the campus and complete other tasks. Universities are also making more effort to attract parents, such as touting job assistance programmes that could offset tuition costs.

Another influence affecting Japanese students is the debt burden they take on to get a degree. About 960,000 – or one-third of current university students – are dependent upon public loans to finance their studies, and the amount of debt repayments in arrears hit ¥470 billion last year, mainly caused by joblessness and income drops during Japan’s extended economic slump.

Looming political difficulties with China

Perhaps the most important short-term factor for the Japanese education sector moving forward is an escalating territorial dispute between Japan and China over a set of uninhabited but oil-rich islands located in the East China Sea. Because family and parental views are a major factor in students’ choice of schools, especially in China, some sources expect the flow of applicants from China to fall dramatically in 2013.

This may already be happening. Hitoshi Iwamoto, Director of Fukuoka Foreign Language College, told Study Travel magazine that a third of Chinese students that had enrolled in courses scheduled to commence in October 2012 cancelled. October was the last period from which the Japanese government has made student visa data available. But Iwamoto has said that applications for April programmes are 80% lower than expected.

A decline in numbers that large from Japan’s largest sender of international students would be disastrous, but so far neither side is backing down in a dispute that has seen Japanese nationalists, Chinese marine surveillance vessels, and Japanese coast guard cutters all plying the same waters. In addition, the dispute reached an alarming pitch when Japanese Prime Minister Abe vowed to use force if necessary.

Japan as a bellwether

Japan faces challenges on numerous fronts, but positive changes have taken place. Many observers see the country as the “canary in the coal mine” for other industrialised nations, some of which are seeing the same demographic trends take hold, if to a lesser degree. Japan will be closely watched as a case study of how to manage such issues, and which strategies lead to successful outcomes.

The post Japan’s ambitious proposals for higher education and language sectors appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The survey does more than look at growth and demographic data for FEDELE’s schools – it also asks for opinions about Spain’s international education sector from the survey’s respondents (school directors) from across the country.

Top-line results reveal an increase in student weeks and revenue in 2012, driven by growth from Russia and China as sending markets, which compensated for declines from other nations, namely Denmark. Small and medium-sized schools fared better than larger institutions. Below, ICEF Monitor translates, examines, and puts FEDELE’s data into context.

What is FEDELE?

Before getting into the survey, here’s some quick information about FEDELE that will help in interpreting the information: FEDELE’s main objective is to promote quality teaching of Spanish in Spain. It consists of six associations totaling 88 private Spanish schools. Five of the associations are named for five of Spain’s autonomous communities, and their schools are located in or near those communities.

The sixth association is Asociación Escuelas de Español como Lengua Extranjera, or the Association of Spanish Schools as a Foreign Language, referred to as AELE. This association encompasses schools that are not members of the other five associations, and which are scattered from Málaga in the south of Spain to the Basque Country in the north. So as a whole, FEDELE looks like this:

• FEDELE Barcelona, which has 7 schools, all located in Barcelona.
• FEDELE Comunidad Valenciana, which has 13 schools, located in Alicante (3), Castellón (1), and Valencia (9).
• FEDELE Madrid, which has 13 schools, all located in Madrid.
• Asociación Español en Andulacía, or AEEA, which has 33 schools located in Cadiz (7) Granada (6), Málaga (13) and Seville (7).
• Asociación Español de Español de Castilla y León, or AEECYL, which has 14 schools in Avila (1), Salamanca (12), and Valladolid (1).
• AELE, which has 8 schools located in A Coruña (1), Guipúzcoa (1) the Balearic Islands (2), Marbella (1), Navarra (1), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1), and Biscay (1).

Of the 88 schools, 50 took part in the survey, and FEDELE states that it is extrapolating data from this sample size to apply to the whole association. In a similar vein, FEDELE’s figures apply only to its collection of private schools, and may not perfectly correlate with data for other types of language schools in Spain.

Demographic trends in FEDELE schools

The FEDELE survey uses a measure based on enrolment weeks to show the size of its schools, the growth trends per region, and the demographic makeup of the students. The entire survey is of interest, but we’re going to jump to the middle and start with the demographic information that will be of greatest interest to recruiters.

The graphic below reveals which countries or regions send students to FEDELE Spanish schools and in what proportions. Most of the Spanish country names are self-explanatory, but a few to note are Alemania (Germany), Reino Unido (UK), Corea (Korea), Europa del Este (Eastern Europe), Suiza (Switzerland), Paises Nordicos (Nordic countries), and Paises Arabes (Arabic countries).

The charts below break the data into FEDELE’s sub-regions. FEDELE does not group Dinamarca (Denmark), seen in both the chart above and those below, with the Nordic Countries, though it is in fact Nordic.

The data was collected not by surveying actual student numbers, but by asking the institutions to indicate the top five nationalities of their enrolees. This methodology made for some revealing results, which we see below. The list shows which countries or regions were top five senders for FEDELE schools. In other words, 94% of the schools reported Germany as one of its top five sending countries, and so forth.

• Germany – 94%
• United Kingdom - 70%
• Italy – 52%
• United States – 52%
• France – 46%
• Netherlands – 32%
• Nordic countries – 24%
• Russia – 24%
• China – 22%
• Japan – 20%
• Austria – 18%
• Switzerland – 16%
• Korea – 14%
• Brazil – 8%
• Denmark – 6%
• Arab countries – 2%

The ups and downs of international sending markets

FEDELE also asked its schools which nationalities showed the fastest growth in 2012, and which showed the steepest decline. The methodology was the same – i.e., the results shown refer to the percentage of schools that included these nationalities in its response.

The results were broken into two charts. Thus FEDELE reveals which nationalities showed growth:

And which showed decline:

FEDELE doesn’t include 2011 charts for comparison, but reveals that as a sending market, China has fallen two places since last year. However, respondents still ranked China highly, which indicates merely a downtick in what remains an upward trend.

ICEF Monitor reported last month that about 25,000 Chinese students are currently studying Spanish in Spain, a number representing a huge increase compared to ten years ago. Spanish language instruction within China is also up, with 35 Spanish academies now operating in Beijing, and 90 universities offering Spanish courses. The change shows both the increased importance of Spanish in global markets, and also the increased competition that FEDELE faces.

Notably, the Nordic Countries are up as senders, but Denmark shows a marked decline. Also Germany, while remaining the top sending market to FEDELE schools, did show a slight decline.

The differentiated charts appear below and reveal sharp variation between countries. For example, the US is down as a sender to the Valencian region located on Spain’s eastern coast, but up to Andalucia in the south. Similarly, the Nordic Countries (minus Denmark) are up to Andulacia but sharply down to Castille and León.

FEDELE growth figures

As stated earlier, the survey uses a measure of volume based on enrolment weeks to show the size of its schools.

Thus we see that 48% of the schools are classified as small, 30% are medium, and 22% are large. Spanish schools in the Barcelona and Madrid regions tend to be large, while schools tended to be small in Andalucia in southern Spain, Castille y Leon in the northwest, and in the widely scattered AELE grouping.

Interestingly, the data also showed that while numbers were generally up, the schools showing growth were small and medium schools, while the large schools that responded to the survey showed a tendency to decrease.

Next we see a comparison between 2012 and 2011 weeks/student to get a sense of the growth rate of the schools.

FEDELE’s metric “weeks/student” does not measure actual numbers of students, but rather enrolment weeks. Below is the specific data, which shows that as a whole FEDELE schools grew from 136,100 weeks/student in 2011 to 160,250 weeks/student in 2012.

• AEEA: 53,250 weeks/student 2012; 48,100 weeks/student 2011
• AELE: 8,000 weeks/student 2012; 7,500 weeks/student 2011
• Barcelona: 16,500 weeks/student 2012; 14,700 weeks/student 2011
• Castile y Leon: 21,750 weeks/student 2012; 15,600 weeks/student 2011
• Comunidad Valenciana: 29,250 weeks/student 2012; 25,000 weeks/student 2011
• Madrid: 31,500 weeks/student 2012; 25,200 weeks/student 2011

Growth and decline drivers for FEDELE

FEDELE respondents were asked to cite the major factors affecting school enrolments. Again, the responses were subjective, but give an indication of the issues that are of concern to school administrators. The top responses were as follows:

• The exchange rate in Spain as compared to competing (international) markets: “The impact of this factor in both 2011 and 2012 remains as strong or very strong for most of the schools participating in the survey.”
• The economic climate: “The international economic crisis has affected major emitters of Spanish students and has caused the decline of Spanish students in our traditional markets.”
• Visa policies: “The immigration control measures established in Spain for some countries delay and often hinder penetration into emerging markets.”
• Unfair competition: “The growing number of Spanish students in the world and the consequent development of our sector in Spain has led to the emergence of multiple entities that compete in the market without compliance, with established quality standards even without complying with the law.”
• Marketing budget: “A limited budget to invest in marketing, both in the development of strategies and participation in action.”
• Spain’s image: “A new factor is … the image that Spain has been evolving in recent years [to people on] the outside: economic crisis, corruption, unemployment, eviction demonstrations. This image of instability and insecurity causes insecurity in parents and prescribers that ultimately decide not to send their children/students to our country.”

FEDELE and wider Spain

FEDELE’s data set confirms the increasing global demand for Spanish language instruction and the continued resiliency of Spain’s language sector.

However, the concerns of FEDELE school directors paint a vivid picture. Even in the midst of growth, they feel that their strength with traditional sending markets is declining. Education providers may do well to focus on new sending markets and refine their marketing strategies, perhaps concentrating on untapped customer segments, as outlined in the British Council’s Spain Country Brief.

The post FEDELE’s 2012 Spanish language school survey reveals overall growth appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

ICEF Monitor takes a look at the growing importance of international internships, offers tips on finding opportunities abroad, and what this cross-cultural work experience means for employers and students.

Corporate hiring practices are changing

The benefits of internships are well documented – they provide practical experience, a sample of life in a chosen field, networking opportunities, workplace confidence, and practice using specialist skills and vocabulary amongst real world customers and colleagues. All these benefits go double for international students.

But perhaps most important for internationals, internships provide a chance to get into internal hiring queues, a crucial advantage, since instead of the default approach of recruiting from the outside, companies are refocusing on hiring from within their own ranks.

What are the reasons for this? Internal hires take less time to finalise and have a positive effect on company morale, but the bottom line is they’re economical. According to an August 2012 Time article, the average cost of identifying and hiring an external job candidate is 1.7 times more than an internal hire, and the website hreonline.com reported studies have found that 40% to 60% of external hires “are unsuccessful,” compared to only 25% for internal hires.

The high failure rate for external hires has to do with many factors, among them culture and language issues if they are foreigners, integration and credibility problems with longtime employees, and steep learning curves. Internships can help reduce all these issues yet still allow the company to benefit from the fresh ideas and new perspective a foreigner can bring.

Finding international internships

There are hundreds of international internship resources. At universities, administrative offices for individual academic departments and career services centres would be the first avenues to explore, followed by international relations or foreign affairs offices. Websites, social media, and old-fashioned networking are also valuable tools.

Lauren Berger, of internship listing website Internqueen.com, suggests that students call companies in which they have an interest and inquire directly. In an interview with the New York Times she recommended making a list of ten companies, then visiting their websites and collecting contact information for their internship coordinators.

We’ve compiled a short list of a few other noteworthy external resources (note: most of these charge fees for their services):

• AIESEC – student-administered and present in over 100 countries, this fee-charging organisation provides 60,000 members a year the opportunity to live and work in foreign countries in areas of management, technology, education, and development.
• IAESTE – founded in 1948 and present in over 80 countries, this programme is open to degree level science, engineering, technology and applied arts students in the second year of study and above.
• KOPRA – a non-profit entity administering more than 500 internships focused on East Asia.
• Goabroad.com – a web portal offering a directory of over 27,000 opportunities abroad.
• The Leonardo da Vinci Programme – administered by the European Commission as part of its Lifelong Learning Programme, this offers financial support to EU students involved in internships in other EU countries.
• Intrax Global Internships – an organisation offering college students and recent grads from the US, Canada, and the EU internship placements in Europe, South America and Asia.
• CIEE – a non-profit, non-governmental organisation offering programmes for international students, recent graduates and working professionals as part of the US government’s J-1 Exchange Visitor Program to qualified international candidates for up to 18 months.
• IES Global - provides internships in over 150 companies in China across a variety of highly sought after industry sectors, as well as teaching internships in Vietnam.
• CRCC Asia – a fee-charging agency arranging internships in China in areas including law and green technology, and that usually has three times as many applicants as the 1,300 places it offers.
• International Cross-cultural Committee – headquartered in Tokyo and with offices in numerous countries, ICC accepts students and recent graduates between the ages of 20 to 30 from around the world to intern with host organisations in the Tokyo area.

Application processes vary depending upon country, visa requirements, field of employment, and other factors. Some schools offer credit for already completed internships while others do not allow credit accumulation to begin until after the internships are registered. The amount of credit to be earned also varies, depending upon the learning potential of the work experience and how many hours are worked.

From a recruitment perspective, being knowledgeable about internships at institutions, within host communities, and among international organisations can have a profound impact upon the fortunes on students. With so many options available, informed recruiters who know the details of the internship process in their markets can offer valuable data to students.

The growing importance of internships

Philip D. Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, recently told The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“Once upon a time, ‘trainee’ used to be a common job title. Now companies expect everyone, recent graduates included, to be ready to go on on Day One. The mantle of preparing the work force has been passed to higher ed.”

Or put more bluntly, for employers, internships are increasingly required of applicants.

Sir Tim Wilson, author of the whitepaper “A Review of Business-University Collaboration“, agrees. He believes government should offer tax credits to companies that create paid internships, and told The Guardian last year,

“The world has changed. If you look at a lot of internships offered in the corporate sector, these are highly competitive. I think we’re beginning to see internships being used as part of an extended interview process.”

The article also quotes UK Business Secretary Vince Cable as stating:

“The best universities around the world are building deeper links with business.”

Universities have long maintained internship programmes, however their evolution into an indispensable building block for students’ futures has caused many institutions to take a broader approach:

• The State University of New York, for example, is promoting cooperative education on all nine of its campuses. “Our goal is that all 465,000 students who enroll annually at SUNY have some sort of experiential education experience,” explained chancellor Nancy Zimpher.
• The University of Pittsburgh has also taken a bold approach. Any of the school’s 18,000 undergraduates who complete an internship preparation programme can receive faculty help finding an experiential learning opportunity before graduation.
• At Johnson & Wales University, a US $4 million fund has been created to ensure that all the students at its five campuses can locate and gain placement in a suitable internship.
• In Japan, a recent report revealed that 74% of 476 surveyed universities offer certified course credits to students who participate in internship programmes at companies. Furthermore, 95% of universities with more than 5,000 students grant credits for job experiences, 73% of them for studying abroad and 41% for volunteer projects.

Government and private companies are getting more involved as well:

• Canada is spending CDN $35-million to fund Mitacs, a national not-for-profit organisation that supports research and development at 1,200 companies through 4,800 internships for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Companies put up an average of CDN $25,000, matched by CDN $30,000 a year from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to hire a PhD graduate intern for two years.
• In the UK, the private company Experio Enterprise recently launched a project-based internship and part-time study scheme for international students in London, with a 4-month programme designated for those requiring a UK entry visa, and programmes of flexible duration for those who don’t need entry visas.
• GlobaLinks Learning Abroad has launched a new educational webinar series on international internships which “helps advisors at universities better educate potential programme participants on the components and benefits of high quality programmes that go beyond basic internship placement.”

Internships and getting ahead

Collated international data for internships is not readily available, however various surveys help to paint a picture. In the US, a 2012 survey of 15,715 graduating bachelors students by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) revealed that 55% had received internship or co-op experience. Of that group, 51% had been offered at least one job.

However there was a divergence between paid and unpaid interns, with about 60% of paid interns receiving at least one job offer, compared to 37% of unpaid interns. To put the latter number in perspective, 36% of non-interning graduates received job offers. Clearly, not all internships are created equal.

But what is true is that, broadly speaking, students who have worked as interns command higher starting salaries on the job market. Research from Inspiring Interns revealed that UK graduates who interned for as little as three months could earn £1,500 more in their first year of working than graduates without work experience.

High demand for internships means some students pay for placements, which raises ethical issues – among them whether it is fair for companies to accept unpaid labour from indebted students, and whether wealthier students deserve the advantage of being able to pay more for placements. But as long as businesses drive demand, neither of these issues is likely to be resolved soon. In the end, barring changes to the system, the most important consideration is each student’s future needs.

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Today’s ICEF Monitor post is a market snapshot of Turkey that will shed light on the expanding educational opportunities in this interesting country.

Quick facts

Geography: Turkey sits at the junction of Europe and Asia, bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. To the south is the Mediterranean Sea, to the west is the Aegean Sea, and to the north is the Black Sea.

Official language: Turkish (85% of the population).

Religion: The vast majority of population is Muslim.

Population: 74.8 million, 25.8% of which are under the age of 15. In fact, Turkey currently has the largest number of young people in its history, with 20 million Turks between the ages of 10 and 24. By 2023, Turkey’s population is expected to rise to over 84.2 million.

Main cities: Istanbul (by far the largest), Ankara (the capital), Izmir.

Culture: Democratic and secular.

Main trading partners: Germany, followed by Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Memberships: NATO, the Council of Europe, G-20, associate member of the European Economic Community (EEC).

Rising regional prominence

Turkey’s economy has been growing steadily for the past ten years, and just this week came the announcement that its economy grew by 11.4% for the first quarter, a growth rate second only to China’s. Last June, its exports grew by 13%.

It is currently being considered for entry into the European Union, and Goldman Sachs has classified it among the MIST countries (a second tier of emerging economies to watch), alongside Mexico, Indonesia, and South Korea.

Domestic education with a focus on internationalisation

Over the last decade, there has been substantial government investment in education: the 2011 budget of the Turkish Ministry of National Education was three and half times larger than the 2002 budget.

Today there are more than 100 public universities and more than 50 private ones, nine of which are internationally ranked; quite a change from a few decades ago (circa 1970) when Turkey had fewer than ten universities.

All universities are subject to a national testing and admissions system and fall under the control of central government policy agencies. There are also vocational colleges and teacher training institutions.

QS notes that:

“According to national statistics, there were almost 27,000 foreign students studying in Turkey in the 2010-11 academic year – an increase of more than 10,000 compared to 2005-6. However, the Turkish government has much greater ambitions, having set a target of 100,000 international students in the country by 2015. Attracting more international students is a priority for many Turkish universities, and both public and private institutions are introducing policies to support this – including lower tuition rates for foreign students, and more international student scholarships.”

In terms of the distribution of the student population, there are now more than two million higher education students in Turkey, half of which are in undergraduate programmes (half a million are in higher vocational schools). The private, foundation universities enrol only 9% of the student population – they are more specialised and cater to a niche target group.

Turkish students love the US

Turkey outranks both Britain and Germany as the European country sending the most international students to the US: it has been sending roughly 10,000 students there since 2000 (and 12,000 in 2012), and has for years been the only European country to be a constant top-10 student sender to the US, according to Open Doors, a group that analyses global student mobility.

A New York Times article explains that:

“At one time, France and Germany were popular destinations for Turkish students, but the increasing popularity of English as a second language helps pull students to the United States. Britain’s appeal as an alternative has been diminished by recent changes to student visa rules.”

The article quotes Turkish university Koc’s vice president for academic affairs, Selcuk Karabati, as saying,

“The US is seen as more open to international students …. The UK is seen as being mainly interested in attracting foreign students for financial reasons.”

Turkish-American links are firmly established; the first group of Turkish students went to the US in 1951 under the popular Fulbright programme, and Turkey has also hosted a number of Americans through the scheme. Days ago during the opening of the new Fulbright office in Ankara, US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone commented that the joint programme ongoing with the Scientific and Technological Research and Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) will result in a whole new era of relations between Turkey and the US in further generations.

International educational ties

Despite continued strong linkages with the US, Turkish education representatives say they are pursuing a “diversified, multidirectional internationalisation instead of one dimensional internationalisation.”

One recent example of this is that Turkey and the UK signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in December 2012 on the heels of the Knowledge Partnership Initiative the countries signed 2011 to increase trade and investment between the UK and Turkey and collaborations in science, research and innovation.

Britain is not the only European country with which Turkey is forging educational linkages.

Partly as a result of its closer ties with the EU (it is a candidate for full admission), Turkey has been harmonising its education system with countries in the EU, including “a qualification structure, professional qualification recognition and VET reform.”

UK NARIC, the UK’s national agency responsible for providing information and opinion on vocational, academic, and professional qualifications from across the world, notes that:

“Turkey has also been heavily involved with the Lifelong Learning Programme, it has been estimated that, between 2007–13, almost 250,000 Turks will have benefitted from EU education and training programmes.”

Many Turkish universities have also participated in the Erasmus programme, Europe’s student exchange programme that boasts participation from about 90% of European universities in 31 countries.

And, Turkey is beautiful and fascinating

Turkey’s expanding domestic education system, young population, history of sending students abroad to study, and interest in forging international education linkages would make it compelling on those merits alone. But Turkey is also famously beautiful and historic, with a tradition of charting its own path despite all the geo-political tensions around it.

It offers a mixture of Eastern and Western cultural traditions and gorgeous landscape – a richness and complexity that a certain segment of students will be interested in. For a helpful guide to the study abroad opportunities in Turkey, you can consult this informative Institute of International Education white paper, which though intended for an American audience, provides great information for any higher education professional: Expanding US Study Abroad to Turkey: A Guide for Institutions.

The post Market snapshot: Turkey appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Malta hasn’t seen numbers like this since its peak years of 2007 and 2008. A year-on-year comparison for total international language student arrivals is as follows:

• 2012: 81,911
• 2011: 69,297
• 2010: 72,695
• 2009: 68,918
• 2008: 83,288
• 2007: 83,952
• 2006: 65,983

Top sending markets

Almost two-thirds of the students in 2012 came from the usual five countries (no change in this trend), with 88.5% of all students coming from Europe:

• Italy: 19.2% (up from 17.8% in 2011)
• Germany: 14.1% (down from 17.1% in 2011)
• Russia: 13.9% (up from 11.9% in 2011)
• France: 10.4% (down from 11.7% in 2011)
• Spain: 7.3% (down from 10.2% in 2011)

Russia continues to show strong growth, with FELTOM’s (Federation of English Language Teaching Organisations Malta) new CEO Genevieve Abela explaining to Study Travel magazine, “Visas are now being processed in a more timely fashion and there has been a noticeable increase in flight seat capacity for students travelling from Moscow and St Petersburg. In addition, unlike traditional European source markets, Russian students prefer long-term stays of between four and eight weeks, while Europeans generally stay for no more than two weeks. This trend is reflected in the results.”

Malta also came out a winner in the SALTA’s (Swiss Association of Language Travel Agents) latest survey, with Swiss students demonstrating increased interest in the island nation as a study destination, but NSO numbers did reveal a slight dip here. Switzerland’s numbers have remained fairly steady (2,329 in 2011 vs 2,116 in 2012) but the country fell to eighth place as a sending market, with Turkey overtaking it in a big leap from 1,673 students in 2011 to 2,783 students in 2012.

Other nations with increased sending power include Poland (rose to 1,800 students from 1,470 in 2011), Libya sent 1,424 in 2012, Ukraine (more than doubled to 1,199 from 523 in 2011), South Korea (nearly doubled to 1,124 from 586 in 2011), Sweden at 988 students in 2012, and Finland making a jump to 859 students from 246 in 2011.

All continents experienced an increase over 2011, but Africa and Asia stood out for their growth potential. Africa showed a 192.6% increase in the 2012 student population (largely due to Libya), and Asia a 165.2% increase.

Additional market trends

Students’ average length of stay for 2012 was estimated at 2.8 weeks. Increases in all calendar months were recorded when compared to 2011. With an average of 7.9 weeks, students from South Korea had the highest average duration, followed by Turkey (5.6 weeks) and Libya (5.3 weeks). The total number of weeks spent by foreign students in Malta amounted to 226,360, up from 182,347 in 2011.

Much like previous years, the junior market proved to be the most successful with the largest proportion of language students (26.6%) between 16-17 years old (21,791), closely followed by students 15 years old and under (18,421), and young adults aged between 18-25 years (18,927).

And as expected, July was the busiest month for English language schools, with 23,628 students or 28.8% of the annual total, followed by August and June. Persons studying English as a foreign language amounted to 5.7% of total foreign nationals visiting Malta during 2012. However, during the busiest month of July, 13.5% of foreigners visiting Malta were international students attending English language specialised schools.

Malta on the up-and-up

It’s not just the weather forecast delivering sunny results for the Mediterranean island. FELTOM’s annual event held a few weeks ago was deemed a success, with the organisation’s Chairman Julian Cassar Torreggiani showing a great deal of enthusiasm to “constantly [try] to improve for the sake of our schools and the language travel industry as a whole.”

And as we reported last month, Malta continues to strengthen its education quality standards and their tourism sector is also on the up-and-up. Total arrivals for the last quarter of 2012 were at 297,348 – up by 6.4% when compared to the corresponding quarter during 2011 – and January 2013 arrivals were up 5.8% over January 2012.

Local schools and tourism operators told ICEF Monitor that they were expecting a strong summer ahead, with some indicating that due to the recent troubles in Cyprus, holiday makers and students who might have been considering a visit to Cyprus would now perhaps choose Malta instead. And with a new airline route between Oslo and Malta kicking off this summer, perhaps the Scandinavian market will prove fruitful in 2013.

Additional headlines related to developments in the Maltese education industry include…

• The newest school on the island, ACE English Malta, opened last February and will celebrate on 3 May with an official launch reception and school tour. Agents interested in attending are welcome to contact the school. With 26 classrooms and interactive white boards in each one, the new boutique language school has responded well to students’ demands of technology in learning.
• EC English Language Centres, the Malta-headquartered education group, has extended its international chain to 17 institutions with the opening of its newest school in Oxford, UK.
• INTO University Partnerships is looking to establish a base on the main island of Malta as well as its sister island Gozo, with the potential to bring in over 3,000 foreign students a year.
• The University of Malta and the Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia, have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote collaborative research and the exchange of students and staff between the two universities.
• The Maltese government will introduce vocational training in secondary schools in order to encourage more students to continue studying after they turn 16 years old.

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Even amid the current economic turmoil and challenges in the higher education sector, Spain has proved to be resilient as a study destination, thanks in large part to the strength of its language sector.

Demand for Spanish language escalating

Spain’s language sector is a bright spot in the educational system. It was recently cited by Minister of Foreign Affairs José Manuel García-Margallo as an invaluable asset, particularly in building ties with Asia, where interest in Spanish is mounting, according to a 2012 study by the Spanish research firm Instituto Cervantes.

Data from the Institute suggests, for example, that about 25,000 Chinese undergraduates studied Spanish in China in 2012, up from a mere 1,500 twelve years ago. The report reveals that 35 Spanish academies now operate in Beijing, and 90 universities in China offer Spanish.

Demand for Spanish instruction is clearly escalating quickly in Asia – specifically China, Hong Kong, Japan, and India.

But the growth of Spanish learning in Asia merely reflects the growing importance of the language in global economic markets. Not only is the Latin American region economically ascendant, but the use of Spanish online has grown by a staggering 800% in the last few years, making it the third most popular Internet language behind Mandarin and English. Facebook alone has 80 million accounts in Spanish.

With 495 million speakers and 18 million students studying Spanish as a foreign language, it is the second most spoken language in the world today, after Mandarin Chinese, and is an official language in 21 countries. And as the second most common language of economic powerhouses Brazil and the United States, a period of study in Spain can pay dividends. Forecasts suggest that in three or four generations, 10% of the world’s population will understand Spanish, and the US will have the highest volume of Spanish-speakers, after Mexico.

Studying in Spain

In terms of appeal, the country often ranks highly in surveys of preferred destinations. For example, Study Abroad’s 2012 survey of 16,000 international students ranked the University of Salamanca as the ninth best school in the world to study.

The EU-funded body La Red Europea de Migración released a report pegging the number of foreign students in Spain in 2011/2012 at approximately 70,000, which represented about 4.6% of the student body (in 2010/2011 total international student enrolment was 72,488). More foreign students were present at higher academic levels, with foreign participation among undergrads, Masters students, and PhD candidates at respectively 3.3%, 16.9% and 24.7%. The top five places of origin in 2010/11 were Italy, Colombia, Morocco, Romania and France.

To further promote studying in Spain, a few weeks ago, the Spanish government together with Instituto Cervantes launched the new edu-tourism portal Study in Spain. The website serves as a tool to attract potential students from around the world by providing information on the various quality education options that exist in Spain, and the internationalisation of educational services in Spain.

Spain’s education sector fractured

Indicators may point upward for Spain’s language sector, but the country as a whole remains caught in the vise of economic downturn and austerity cuts. In mid-March thousands of teachers, students and parents took to the streets of Madrid to protest more planned budget cuts to the education sector that has already absorbed €5 billion (US $6.5 billion) in decreased funding.

Along with the cuts have come sell-offs to the private sector, raised tuition fees, increases to teachers’ hours, increases in the numbers of students in each class, and allegations of corruption. The government has moved toward restructuring Spain’s universities, only one of which cracks Times Higher Education’s top 200 in its most recent World University Rankings.

Similar challenges exist in other countries, however Spain’s situation is uniquely precarious. While typically thought of by foreigners as one nation, Spain in reality is a conglomeration of seventeen autonomous regions. Those communities have often had fractious relations with the central government in Madrid, and two of those enclaves – Pais Vasco (the Basque Country) and Catalonia – have more economic power and higher levels of prosperity than in the rest of Spain.

For this reason, policies from Madrid affecting the Pais Vasco and Catalonia come freighted not only with historical baggage dating from the time of the country’s civil war and before, but also are seen as instances of the weak dictating to the strong. In those regions, a large percentage of people are advocating national independence.

Mariano Rajoy’s education proposals

It’s against the above backdrop that prime minister Mariano Rajoy and his education minister José Ignacio Wert have targeted Spain’s education sector for broad reforms, including amendments to 2006’s Organic Law of Education (LOE). Some of the changes include:

• Raising the amount of class time spent on basic skill acquisition, a reinforcement of math, language and science curriculum, and simplification of routes and electives.
• Using standardised external assessments for all Spanish students, based on subjects measured in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
• Bolstering the authority and autonomy of the school directors.
• Enabling the transfer of teachers according to educational needs.

In addition to the aforementioned are two particularly controversial changes:

• The reversal of a policy enacted after the death of dictator Francisco Franco allowing Basque, Catalan, and Galician to be given priority in regional schools. This issue is particularly divisive because Basque and Catalan were illegal during the dictatorship years, but the intervening period has seen a proud resurgence of the languages.
• The second change is a reform increasing the curricular content to be determined by Madrid. In autonomous communities such as Pais Vasco and Catalonia it will be raised from 55% to 65%. The reform is ostensibly intended to help enable homogenous evaluations of Spanish students, but Minster Wert did not help himself when in October he admitted wanting to “españolizar” or “to make Spanish” the students of Catalonia.

More changes are in the offing. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports has decided to further reduce the Becas scholarships that fund study abroad programmes for language students. The goal is to increase enrolments in local courses, thus keeping more students inside Spain, with the only exempted receiving country being France, for which 500 study abroad scholarships will be retained.

Because of Spain’s unique internal situation it’s difficult to predict what is on the horizon. Rajoy is unlikely to abandon his reform plan, but regional leaders have aired the possibility of challenging the new laws in Spain’s highest court. Complicating matters, an online petition calling for Rajoy’s resignation has logged over one million signatures, which means there is no guarantee he or his reforms will be around for long.

What does all this mean for Spain as a sending/receiving market?

With educational cuts making schooling more expensive, over 50% youth unemployment awaiting graduates, and wage reduction affecting millions of workers, more and more students and young people are migrating out of the country. Jorge Barrio, a 20-year-old topography student going to school in Madrid, told the Global Post recently,

“The only option I see is to go and work or study abroad.”

Barrio is hardly alone. More than 65,000 Spaniards have fled to Argentina since 2008, and another 25,000 have gone to Mexico. Demand to study abroad is up by an estimated 157% from Spaniards, boosting student mobility across Europe, both to more stable EU economies and to other attractive international destinations. Moreover, Spain’s National Statistics Institute expects 500,000+ people to leave the country each year in the near term, and possibly until the year 2020 if demographic trends continue.

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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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At one with their mobile devices

To call each generation more tech savvy than the last may be the understatement of the digital age. Consider these statistics:

• The retail site Angiolotty uncovered data suggesting that among children 2 to 5 years of age who have Internet access at home, more know how to play a computer game and use a smartphone than know how to ride a bike or tie their shoelaces.
• As of 2012, millennials owned more than half of all tablet computers.
• A recent Cisco survey revealed that, globally, about 20% of millennials check their smartphones at least every 10 minutes. In the US, it’s 40%. (See the infographic below for more stats)
• Globally, one-third of millennials check their smartphones at least every 30 minutes. In the US, it’s more than 50%.

Smartphones are conduits through which nearly every aspect of millennials’ lives flow. Recent surveys show that making calls has now fallen to the fifth most frequent form of usage for a smartphone. The rankings are as follows, in time per day:

• Internet: 24 mins 49 secs
• Social media: 17 mins 29 secs
• Music: 15 mins 38 secs
• Games: 14 mins 26 secs
• Phone calls: 12 mins 06 secs
• Emails: 11 mins 06 secs
• Texts: 10 mins 12 secs
• TV/Film: 09 mins 23 secs
• Books: 09 mins 22 secs
• Camera: 03 mins 28 secs

The pervasiveness of smartphones naturally means that they have become part of the campus fabric, but as discussed previously on ICEF Monitor, student demand for classroom use of mobile technology, particularly tablet computers, outpaces the rate at which institutions are officially adopting it. There is still much debate as to how to use technology in the classroom, with a recent survey showing that many teachers in the US and Germany say they don’t receive enough technology training, particularly when compared to China.

And students don’t just want technology to be used during class hours – they want academic information and course material to be constantly available via their mobile devices, something educators need to bear in mind both for prospective and current students.

For example, studies have shown that 52% of prospective students had used a mobile phone or tablet to view a college or university website, but worryingly, less than half of US four-year institutions have a website that is optimised for mobile browsing. Students’ needs for constant connectivity can be fulfilled via interactive webpages such as virtual tours, using mobile apps for recruitment, and maintaining social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, and regional networks.

How do you market to people who have seen everything?

How schools and universities leverage social interfaces is, of course, an ongoing challenge. For example, only 4% of Americans aged 15 to 25 think that a Facebook product page is a credible source of information about the product.

However Facebook’s expansion into non-Western markets is far from complete, which means it’s still a valuable tool. Even as growing percentages of Americans say they intend to use the site less in 2013, and 600,000 Britons dropped out in December, it continues to experience growth globally.

In the US and Europe, other online interfaces such as Tumblr, Digg, Instagram and Pinterest are growing quickly. All of these have simplicity or brevity in common, but more crucially they embody the millennial ideals of sharing, whereas Facebook is seen as a place for boasting. As theverge.com put it recently:

“The days over-sharing may have passed, and bragging online isn’t as fun as it used to be.”

And as more and more US college admissions officials and employers review social media profiles, there is a risk that students will alter the way they use certain platforms.

Transparency is another key. Millennials want to know who is behind the curtain, and to whom information ultimately flows.

Given their aversion to overt advertising, the most reliable source of product or service endorsement is word-of-mouth from peers. The most popular categories, according to Insites Consulting, are posts in online forums and blogs (22%), endorsement by friends (14%), and the opinion of other brand users (20%).

For learning institutions and recruiters, it’s key to remember that millennials understand their role as a commodity. They know you need them. Though track record is meaningful, millennials also want to be sold on current and future plans and be convinced that these relate to their personal vision for the future. They want to be prepared for positions in industries that may not even exist yet.

Millennial visions for the future

Researchers are digging deeper into the millennial generation each day.

In Europe, Bielefeld University is coordinating an EU project called SocIEtY, in which 40 social scientists and 13 partners from 11 European countries will be carrying out comparative national studies seeking to find out what young people consider necessary to live a successful life.

But some facts are already clear:

A major facet of millennial thinking revolves around the concept of control. Millennials want to control their own information, educational attainment, and career direction. They retreat from any attempt to prevent these goals. They believe in the value of traditional education, but see other vehicles as potentially viable. They appreciate unexpected methods and experiences.

Those other methods may include different classroom techniques such as gamification, but also new delivery platforms allowing them to consume pieces of curriculum on their terms. The rapidly expanding choices in MOOCs fit into this context.

Furthermore, the millennial approach to schooling is predicted to transform the workplace. Barriers to women attaining leadership roles will decrease, top-down leadership will decline, and dispersed or virtual offices will become more common, so much so that a recent Citrix report on the future workplace predicts offices housing only 6 desks for every 10 workers.

Other workplace changes will include a decline of email and meetings in favor of instant messaging, a results-only work environment, and an expansion of communalism in the form of regular, immediate social feedback on each employee’s daily production.

Change will come, wanted or not

While some observers are wary of change, and others predict that millennial values cannot succeed in the real world, the sheer demographic mass of the generation ensures that change will happen regardless.

Millennials are the largest generation ever, and they will be the best educated as well. A group of such size and with such education has no choice but to have an impact.

Millennials are different from every generation that came before them. In life, school, and work, they are said to see things from a different perspective. But perhaps this is only true in the specifics. In the broad sense, millennials want the same thing each new generation wants: a world that suits them better than the one they inherited.

For more statistics on 18-30 year olds in 18 different countries, see the infographic below based on Cisco’s survey mentioned earlier in this article:

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• 56% of US respondents are considering studying overseas, compared to only 20% of UK respondents;
• US students who want to study abroad appear to be more interested in doing so in order to travel and explore other cultures, whereas UK students see study abroad as a conduit to working for international companies and living overseas;
• Only 24% of UK students and 22% of US students felt they had enough resources to make an informed decision about overseas study.

These top findings are among the results of over 10,800 responses from both countries that appear in “Broadening Horizons: Breaking through the barriers to overseas study“, the latest research report produced by Education Intelligence, the British Council’s global research arm.

The enthusiasm to study abroad shown by the American students is surely a welcome sign, given that only a small proportion of US students pursue degrees overseas compared to other nations. As the 2012 Open Doors Report showed, about 14% of American students receiving Bachelor’s degrees this past year have studied abroad at some point during their undergraduate programmes, while only 1% of US students are studying abroad during a single academic year (273,996 out of the more than 20 million students enroled in US higher education).

It appears the challenge lies in making sure students are aware of the opportunities before them and ensuring information on study abroad options is available, accurate, and easily accessible. The report highlights:

“Access to information resources for students seeking an overseas study experience is crucial at every stage of the decision-making process, whether the information is to do with funding, course choice, programme length or destination.”

The main resources students in both countries relied on included internet research, teachers and lecturers, and international or study abroad offices. Student recruitment agents, more commonly used in traditional sending markets, were noticeably left off the list.

This “info gap” echos findings from two reports ICEF Monitor reviewed last autumn based on survey responses from 4,000 freshmen at US-based institutions. Results showed that campus services were unable to meet student demand in the areas of career planning, study skills and financial guidance. In addition, difficulty accessing information was cited as a challenge for UK students interested in post-overseas-study work rights, according to another ICEF Monitor report from last year. It remains to be seen who will step in and give US and UK student services the boost it may well need.

Motivations to study abroad

The British Council report indicates both academic and non-academic drivers for study abroad.

The main academic motivations identified by students wanting to study overseas from both the US and the UK were similar: gaining credit for a current study programme and improving language skills. To a slightly greater extent than in the US, UK students indicated that they felt there were limited degree options at home and that study abroad was a way of widening their academic opportunities.

But when looking at the non-academic factors identified by UK and US students, it starts to get interesting. Both groups shared the desire to have a unique adventure and travel overseas; however, UK students tended to place greater emphasis on their potential overseas study experience as the beginning of an international career and as something that would improve their employment prospects.The report went on to explain:

“In focus group discussions, US students expressed concern about pursuing academic opportunities in other countries owing to the high standard of domestic provision, which they also felt was something recognised by future employers. Instead, they pursued study abroad to develop soft skills and add non-academic weight to their resumes.”

When asked to clarify their main non-academic drivers, the respondents considering overseas study indicated the main purposes of the experience were to…

• have a unique adventure: 84% US vs. 58% UK
• travel overseas: 66% US vs. 46% UK
• improve employment prospects: 19% US vs. 48% UK
• start an international career:  30% US vs. 47% UK
• become self-sufficient: 36% US vs. 22% UK
• build self confidence: 30% US vs. 36% UK

Among US students, the report notes that there was a considerable difference in opinion between those contemplating studying abroad and those who were not or were undecided.

Of those considering overseas study, 88% said they believed it would give them the edge they needed when applying for a job, compared to only 59% of those not considering or undecided.

“Most notably, 27% of those not considering or undecided about overseas study said that they did not know whether studying abroad would give them the additional skills they felt they required. This indicates that there is a lack of knowledge about and understanding of the wider benefits of international study among US students.”

The attitudes US students are showing towards the reasons for study abroad appear to be in line with the US Department of Education’s (DOE) recently announced international strategy: “Succeeding Globally through International Education and Engagement”.

According to the strategy, which aims to prepare American students to succeed in a globalised world, graduates face a unique set of challenges such as a highly competitive job market where students are competing with peers from around the world as well as needing to communicate and collaborate with people from other countries.

Patti Peterson, American Council of Education (ACE) presidential advisor on internationalisation and global engagement, said the job market had changed, and that most big-name companies were looking for employees with a more global mindset.

“They talk about wanting employees who are comfortable in multicultural teams, and working and interacting with staff in other countries,” she said.

In order to achieve these results, the DOE aspires to equip US students with the skills to succeed in a multicultural environment by enhancing their understanding of other cultures, languages, and religions through travel and study abroad opportunities.

Destinations and programmes of study

The British Council report outlines four general categories for students pursuing overseas study:

• those looking to develop their language skills,
• those pursuing academic excellence in one subject in a world-class institution,
• those who are after international career opportunities,
• those who are seeking a unique travelling experience.

Which category people fall into often determines their study destination.

Trends in destination choices for UK and US students were consistent, with two minor variations: the US top ten included South Korea and Ireland, whereas the UK top ten included Canada and the Netherlands. While 29% of UK respondents selected the US as their first-choice study destination, 22% of US respondents listed the UK as their first choice.

Business, STEM subjects and foreign languages were popular fields of study for students from both nations. US demand is centred around the undergraduate level. UK students wanting to study abroad at the postgraduate level were mainly interested in an MBA and liberal arts, life science and social studies. Meanwhile US students at this level were more interested in law, computer and information technology, architecture, building and planning, agriculture and veterinary medicine.

Cost topping the list of concerns

Financial concerns and a lack of information were the biggest barriers to studying overseas for all respondents, regardless of whether or not they had decided they wanted to study abroad. Other hesitations included language ability, difficulty leaving friends/family, safety abroad, cultural fit, ease of obtaining a visa, degree recognition and health care costs.

For students who were not considering study abroad or were undecided, not surprisingly, help with funding was cited as a major factor which could potentially lead them to pursue a period of overseas study. Foreign language training and inspiring info sessions from study abroad alumni or instructors would also help to sway their opinions.

The report concludes, “When students were asked whether they had considered studying a full degree overseas in a destination where the fees were considerably less than at home, there was a real lack of awareness about the study alternatives available to them and the actual costs involved. As traditional host destinations, the UK and the US have not been the focus of institutional and national education marketing campaigns that could attract students to consider full degree study overseas. It may only be a matter of time before the UK and the US are targeted more strategically by marketers and this trend begins to develop.”

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