When a number becomes repeated often enough as a fact it is often difficult to see past it. If it appears to be backed by credible sources like the OECD any sense of concern about authenticity diminishes. That is probably why the prediction of 8 million students studying outside their home country by 2025 entered the HE sector’s psyche. But the emergence of that number and its credibility as a prediction based on solid data is difficult to trace.
It’s important partly because of the scale of investment in the sector based on its potential for growth. Since 2010, over a billion dollars has been invested in private providers of pathway courses – examples include Providence, Leeds Equity, and Bridgepoint deals involving Study Group, INTO University Partnerships and Cambridge Education Group. Shorelight and Oxford International also become new entrants to the pathway landscape in 2013 and 2014 respectively. The title image to this blog is a cropped slide from a presentation at a major, publicly-quoted, pathway provider’s April 2017 Investor Strategy Day.
Universities in traditional receiving countries have also built development plans around growing numbers of international students studying on campus. In the UK alone they are looking to increase international student fee income by nearly 30% in the three years to 2018/19 – a figure even HEFCE politely suggested shows ‘over optimism’. And the Daily Telegraph reported £5.3bn being sunk into purpose-built student accommodation in 2017, compared to £4.5bn the year before and a record £6bn in 2015.
The sector and those who write about it have often used the 8 million as a touchstone. In 2015 the University of Oxford’s International Strategy Office stated, ‘The global population of students who move to another country to study continues to rise…is likely to reach 8 million students per year by 2025.’ In May 2017 a NAFSA flier from one private provider stated confidently, ‘8M students to study outside their home countries by 2025’. The ‘2016 Top Markets Report on Education A Market Assessment Tool for U.S. Exporters’ from the U.S. Department of Commerce also stated that by 2025 ‘…eight million students will be globally mobile.’
Most authors quote the same source for the forecast – the 2012 OECD publication, AHELO Feasibility Study. But the OECD do not appear to have done their own data-crunching. The Study reads, ‘growth is projected to continue in the future to reach approximately 5.8m around 2020 (Bohm et al, 2004) and 8m by 2025 (Altbach and Bassett).’ (OECD, AHELO Feasibility Study Report Volume 2, p.24, 2012). The 5.8m reference is from the British Council’s 2020 Vision document (2004) which was underpinned by IDP’s Global Forecasting Model.
The OECD reference to Altbach and Bassett is credited to an article called ‘The Brain Trade’, in a 2004 edition of the publication, Foreign Policy. In this relatively brief article the authors write, ‘a recent Australian study estimates that the total number of international students will increase to 8 million by 2025’. (The Brain Trade, Foreign Policy, Washington DC pp 30-31, Sept-Oct 2004). That would seem to rule out Altbach and Bassett as the original source although the article does not provide a citation to follow.
In Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution (Altbach et al) for the 2009 UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education the claim is of an even greater acceleration in growth. Page 7 of the full document reads, ‘More than 2.5 million students are studying outside of their home countries. Estimates predict 8 million international students by 2020.’ Confusingly, the Executive Summary settles (on page vi) for saying, ‘Estimates predict the rise to 7 million international students by 2020.’
Neither the source of the 8 million or the 7 million are articulated but the source of the ‘Australian study’ seems clear. Altbach, on page 25 of the main report, says ‘By 2025, research undertaken for IDP Pty Ltd in Australia suggests that roughly 7.2 million students may be pursuing some higher education internationally, an increase of 188 percent over the 2006 UNESCO estimate (Böhm, et al., 2002). The research in question is GLOBAL STUDENT MOBILITY 2025: Forecasts of the Global Demand for International Higher Education (Bohm, Davis, Meares and Pearce, 2002). But the question of how this relates to a prediction of 8 million globally mobile students remains unclear.
The answer may lie in a 2003 update of the IDP research. The executive summary (page 3) says that one key finding is that ‘global demand for international higher education is forecast to increase from over 2 million in 2003 to 7.6 million in 2025’. It seems possible that the 7.6m was simply rounded up to 8m but the consequences are significant. In terms of financial outcomes 400,000 students equates, at a conservative estimate, to yearly fee income of more than $5bn dollars.
What is also striking is that, as noted in the British Council’s Vison 2020 report (2004) the IDP Global Forecasting Model, underpinning the 2003 research, was based upon the UNESCO 2001 World Education Report which relied largely on figures from 1996. Could it be that statements being made in 2017 about 8 million globally mobile students by 2025 are relying on a rounding error from a report using data that is 20 years old?
Table 1. Summary Graphic – How The 8 Million May Have Evolved
None of this is intended to undermine the work of the researchers involved. Forecasting is fiendishly difficult and those working in HE recognise the time delays and complexities which can make source material difficult to manage and interpret. We also recognise that circumstances can change rapidly and make even the most accomplished market analyst look foolish.
As we see in the most recent OECD graphic (below) the numbers enrolled overseas grew by only 400,000 from 2010 to 2015. This compared to growth of 1.2m additional students from 2005 to 2010. It seems likely that quality in country provision, and additional tuition options in English-language, as well as the growth of on-line delivery, is allowing students to study in ways that meet their career and personal aspirations at lower cost.
Table 2 : Education at a Glance 2017: OECD Indicators Figure C4.a. Long-term trends in the global number of students enrolled abroad (foreign students definition)
The extraordinary growth in the first decade of the 21st Century may become seen as the peak moment for increased international mobility. In 2012 the British Council predicted that mobility would plateau by 2020. More recently the British Council has predicted that that the annual growth for global outbound students is projected to average at 1.7 percent to 2027, dropping from 5.7 in the period 2000-2015. It is difficult at this point to see that those presentations which held Emo of Friesland arriving at Oxford in the 12th Century as the first in a wave of international students numbering 8m by 2025 will be correct.
Perhaps all this reflects the danger of International student enrolment being viewed as a cryptocurrency where the uninformed may make investments in the misunderstood for fear of missing a wave of future riches. As Warren Buffet memorably said, ‘when the tide goes out..you discover who’s been swimming naked’.
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