Press Release: The Global Competition for Talent. A New CSHE Study Analyzes the Rapidly Changing Market for International Students and Outlines the Need for a Strategic Approach in the US

CSHE > News > Press Release: The Global Competition for Talent. A New CSHE Study Analyzes the Rapidly Changing Market for International Students and Outlines the Need for a Strategic Approach in the US

September 29 2009 – A new study by CSHE researchers John Douglass and Richard Edelstein, The Global Competition for Talent, discusses the rapidly changing global market for talented students and the lack of a strategic approach by the US federal and state governments, and by most colleges and universities. Excerpts from the study follow, and a shorter version was recently published in Change magazine.

The US remains a world leader in the prestige and, arguably, the quality of its advanced graduate programs. Yet there is growing evidence that students throughout the world no longer see the US as the primary place to study, that in some form this correlates with perceived increases in quality and prestige in the EU and elsewhere.

There clearly are a complex set of variables that will influence international education and global labor markets, including the current global economic recession. Ultimately, however, we think these factors will not alter the fundamental dynamics of the new global market, which include the following facts:

• The international flow of talent, scientific or otherwise, is being fundamentally altered as nations invest more in educational attainment, human capital, and their higher education systems.

• The US will continue to lose some of its market share over time — the question is how quickly and by how much.

• Without some form of proactive strategy, those nations, such as the US, that are highly dependent on global in-migration of talented students and professionals are most vulnerable to downward access to global talent, with a potentially significant impact on future economic growth.

How can the US use its universities and colleges to meet the need for entrepreneurial and creative talent in the sciences and engineering, as well as to educate future leaders who will be able to function in a smaller and smaller world? Any national policy for recruiting and enrolling international students should be embedded in a larger globalization policy. We suggest the following three general goals:

• PROMOTE HIGHER EDUCATION AS A CRITICAL US ASSET AND EXPORT
Increasing the number of international students is a means to ensure the competitiveness of the US work force, expand the position of America’s universities as global leaders, and assert higher education as a vital US export with growth potential.

In the US, international students inject over $15 billion directly into the economy through tuition and living costs, making it a bright spot in an otherwise rather dismal balance of trade. The commercialization of higher education, a la WTO, has its problems. However, not realizing its value as an “export,” among other, perhaps even more important benefits, is a big mistake.

• VIEW GLOBALIZATION AS A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP AND BUILD GLOBAL NETWORKS
Enrolling international students should be part of a larger US strategy to increase cultural exchange and foreign aid; to expand the public mission of universities as global ventures rooted in national service; and to support the global flow of people, expertise, and knowledge.

• BUILD ENROLLMENT AND PROGRAM CAPACITY
Along with attracting and retaining international talent, US policy should focus on increasing degree production rates in the domestic population. This will require support for an expansion of US public universities’ and colleges’ enrollment and program capacity on a scale thus far not recognized at the national or state level. Few, if any, states currently have a strategic approach to expanding their public systems in light of population increases; they need to do so, and include capacity for international students.

Our study provides data on past and recent global trends in international enrollment, and a set of policy recommendations for the US at the federal, state, and institutional levels. This includes the idea of having a national goal for a number of international students in the US over the next decade to match that of a group of competitor nations, and recognizing that the US will need to strategically expand its enrollment capacity to accommodate both needed increases in the educational attainment rate of US citizens, and to welcome more international students.

The US should aim to double its overall international student enrollments from 625,000 in 2008 to 1.25 million in 2020.

In particular, it should aim at a substantial increase in the number of first-degree students, who currently represent less than 2 percent of all undergraduate enrollments; a more globally competitive percentage would be about 10 percent nationally.

Attracting talent in a global market and increasing the degree attainment rates of the domestic population are not mutually exclusive goals. Indeed, they will be the hallmarks of the most competitive economies.

In addition, the authors provide the following recommendations:

1. Develop national strategic goals for international student enrollments at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and link them to broader policy objectives in areas such as foreign relations, national economic development, and educational attainment.

2. Greater flexibility in visa policies and other strategies to improve both recruitment and “stay rates” for foreign nationals

3. Increase financial resources to subsidize and support foreign students via grants, scholarships, loans, and paid work.

4. Marketing and recruiting – The federal government can help create a more unified sense of America’s diverse higher education system for foreign nationals, and improve the availability of information within a market that is often crowded with multiple, often profit-minded ventures.

5. States need to move from a logic of public higher education as strictly a “local” asset to a logic of it being a national and global asset, with the potential to increase a state’s economic competitiveness in a global economy. The first governor to realize this and place resources and political support for increasing the global visability and

6. States need to think creatively about increasing enrollment capacity to both meet goals of broadening access to higher education for state residents and to significantly grow the number of international students — particularly in areas such as STEM fields that meet state and national labor needs.

More and more of our competitors in the global higher education market for talent are providing financial resources to subsidize and support foreign students, via grants, scholarships, loans, and allowing for paid work. This, in turn, will influence the attractiveness of the US, where tuition rates are, generally, much higher.

There is a tremendous opportunity afforded by the new Obama administration to offer a larger strategic vision and an enhanced sense throughout the world that the US is once again a more friendly and active participant in world affairs. The President and his administration should include statements to world leaders that the US seeks to expand the opportunities for international students.

For access to the study, see:
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?id=341

John Aubrey Douglass is the senior research fellow in public policy and higher education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California–Berkeley and is co-editor of Globalization’s Muse: Universities and Higher Education Systems in a Changing World (Public Policy Press, 2009). Richard Edelstein is a research associate at CSHE and is managing director of Global Learning Networks. This study is part of a larger research project on how nation-states and their universities are approaching globalization.

CONTACT: John Aubrey Douglass
douglass@berkeley.edu
CSHE Web site: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/jdouglass.htm

Richard Edelstein
edelstein@gl-networks.com

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