Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR DAVID
GREEN, DR
NEIL KEMP
AND MR
NICK BUTLER
7 JUNE 2004
Q40 Mr Gibb: This table uses the acronym
MESDC which stands for main English-speaking destination countries.
If you were to delete that and insert "world", do we
suddenly change? I just want to make sure that we are second in
the world and not just second in the main English-speaking destination
countries.
Dr Kemp: The data is very weak
on that. We know that countries like India are a strong education
destination. We know that Russia and countries like the Ukraine
still attract large numbers but nothing like ours. China is growing.
Singapore has targeted 150,000 students and is working hard to
achieve that. The UNESCO data on which we base this is pretty
weak in terms of the destination countries. We can pick up students
who might have travelled for study but not their destination country
and we need to do more work on that.
Q41 Mr Gibb: Are you confident that in
the genuine global market, not just English-speaking destination
countries, we are achieving and that we are not actually falling
behind in that market?
Dr Kemp: I think we are; I am
pretty convinced that we are achieving. There are odd ones that
we do not know like Korea . . . We know a bit about Korean and
Chinese students in Japan but we do not know who is going to China
at the moment or North Korean students in China or Chinese students
in Russia. There are large gaps in our knowledge.
Mr Green: I do think that what
you are seeing there is the impact of the campaign. So, you are
not really going to see it until some years into it and so you
see the big increases in 2002 and 2003 and we will see another
one in 2004. Also, in that early period, there was the economic
crisis in the Far East and in South East Asia and that had quite
a significant impact on students particularly from countries like
Malaysia and China.
Q42 Mr Gibb: Yes, but you are losing
those on a more permanent basis to Australia, are you not?
Dr Kemp: We are pulling back at
the postgraduate level. The great thing of the last couple of
years is that, particularly for Singapore and Malaysia, postgraduate
numbers are going up. The undergraduate market is a more difficult
one. We are much more active in that in delivering in-country,
like the University of Nottingham campus and lots of other relationships
and I think one or two UK universities are likely to open up in
Singapore.
Mr Green: In terms of Chinese
students, the 32,000 is the highest of any country. So, more students
from China are coming to the UK than to the States.
Q43 Mr Gibb: And more are coming here
than Australia?
Mr Green: Yes.
Q44 Mr Gibb: Finally, just on a completely
different tack because I am very much in favour of all this, I
think the more you can do of this the better, just looking at
it from the other angle about Oxbridge, presumably there is a
finite number of people, apart from organic growth, who can go
to Oxbridge and there is fierce competition within this country
for places at Oxbridge. What is the proportion of places at Oxbridge
that go to overseas students? Is that increasing or is it declining?
Mr Kemp: The current number I
think is about 13%. To be honest, I have not looked at the trends
but I think they have been fairly constant at that number. It
is the policy of Oxbridge whether they expand provision.
Q45 Mr Gibb: How do they select their
overseas students? Do they select on the same basis as for domestic
students?
Mr Kemp: On academic quality.
Academic quality is a primacy and I would like to think that that
was the same for virtually everyone.
Mr Butler: You will have seen
the recent newspaper reports saying that Oxbridge, and Oxford
in particular, are threatening to increase the number of international
students at the expense of UK students. We just do not get involved
in that. That is a decision for Oxford. We do not influence that.
Mr Green: In terms of the Chevening
scholarship scheme, which we administer for the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office and which is the scholarship scheme for international students
coming to the UK, paid for by the Government, there are some 2,000
Chevening scholars coming from all across the world. Certainly
their first choices tend to be Oxford, Cambridge, the LSE or Warwick,
and their demand cannot be satisfied, so those are spread across
the UK and are limited by those universities saying they will
only take a certain proportion.
Mr Butler: It is part of our education
promotion work overseas to encourage students to look at a wider
range of universities. Inevitably students will want to go to
the best, but our staff are skilled at identifying what their
particular interests are and directing them to other good courses
throughout the UK.
Q46 Jeff Ennis: Continuing on the theme
of market and global trends and where the students are going,
and we have already found out through Nick's questioning that
Australia is pinching a lot of our former Asiatic students, you
mention on page 14 of the report the increased co-operation at
research level that is being undertaken between Australia and
the UK. I am just wondering what the motivation is behind that,
David. Is it a defensive mechanism? Are we trying to take the
wind out of the Aussies' sails or what?
Mr Green: We have a very strong
relationship with IDP Education Australia. We collaborate with
them on ELTs examination.
Q47 Chairman: It is not a cartel, is
it, David?
Mr Green: No, certainly not! That
examination is a tripartite arrangement between IDP Australia,
ourselves and the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Board,
and TAIS international English language test is increasing in
popularity and is something that we are involved in marketing
and administering in many countries. When it came to deciding
that what we needed to do was some research about what the global
picture looked like, we thought it would be helpful to have a
perspective and some input from our Australian colleagues, so
we invited them to take part with us jointly in that. I do not
think it is a defensive position. It is a responsible position
in terms of making sure we get as wide a perspective as possible
since this is blue sky thinking. No-one can predict precisely
what is going to happen to international education but this is
the best bit of research that there is to date.
Q48 Jeff Ennis: Have the Americans had
a take on this collaboration between England and Australia?
Mr Kemp: They have. We had a joint
meeting with the US. The nearest body in the US is called the
Institute for International Education and they share their data
with us and we share ours with the Aussies. Your competitors are
sometimes your best collaborators because you all speak the same
language and we had to understand this first. The issue is not
just the data. It crunches on how you use that data to inform
your marketing and investment decisions and that we will not share.
That is what we would do and that is for a UK institution as well.
We can make that information available and we agreed that there
was a greater good in that. At the end of the day we wanted to
share it because it is for the students. You are trying to think
about what you are putting in place for the students.
Q49 Jeff Ennis: We have seen recently
quite a massive expansion within the EU with the 10 accession
countries. Have you developed a strategy to try and attract the
students from the accession countries into Britain or are we still
targeting the non-EU countries because they bring more brass in?
Mr Green: Personally, I think
it was a mistake to set the targets for non-EU students and in
any new strategy we should be thinking beyond just the revenue
elements; we should be open globally. In terms of what we are
doing with the accession states and marketing to those, Neil can
tell you more about that.
Mr Kemp: We have had one session
with our colleagues who run our offices in the accession states
and we have a 3-day workshop with the Team as well as the rest
of the EU at the end of this month. The issue is quite an interesting
one because on the one hand there is a definite net gain to the
UK economy when you add up the spending of the students whilst
they are here, but DfES has to provide funding support for them
because of the need to treat them the same as domestic students.
You can understand DfES's dilemma but on the other hand for the
UK in the short term there is a net benefit, in the medium term
it is estimated that 25-30% of them might stay on for a bit of
time when they complete, so they do some work, they are paying
UK taxes, they are contributing to GDP growth, and then of course
in the long term it is friends for life, we hope, if we do things
right. When it comes to the accession states there are two potential
growth areas. There is unsatisfied demand in those countries,
but also over the last five years the growth of non-government
provision in those countries has grown rapidly and we are finding
that a lot of UK institutions are going into partnership as quasi-private
companies to deliver there. We are seeing this mixed approach
to growth in those countries. It is quite fascinating.
Q50 Chairman: So would we not be better
off to market masters degrees and postgraduate degrees in accession
countries and soft-pedal the undergraduate degrees? That is where
the real added value is, is it not?
Mr Kemp: It sounds right.
Mr Butler: I think you will find
that institutions are doing just that. The increase in postgraduate
students is growing faster than in undergraduates. I think you
will find that that will be very much a feature of universities
in future.
Q51 Helen Jones: That leads me on to
what I wanted to ask because you said, quite rightly, that the
postgraduate market is growing faster than the undergraduate market.
Where do you think in future the growth in overseas participation
in this country is most likely to come? Will it be postgraduate,
will it be undergraduate but coming from different countries,
or will it be in English language teaching? Have you done any
analysis of where the growth is likely to be?
Mr Kemp: What you observe is that
as economies mature and HE systems mature and move up to the 50%
participation rate the change in demand for educational products
varies. In a very mature market like the US their students come
here for postgraduate research and study abroad on exchange programmes.
Yes, certainly we still have them on undergraduate programmes
and or postgraduate taught programmes. The nature of the product
changes. The demand for undergraduates from Malaysia has declined
because the Malaysians are satisfying more and more in country.
At the moment the growth from the Chinese is because there is
unsatisfied demand in country. As those markets mature you will
find that more and more are coming on postgraduate taught programmes,
which is what is happening in, say, Greece at the moment. We had
a huge number here on undergraduate programmes from Greece but
that has declined because the Greek government have made provision
in country, and now we are seeing many more coming on postgraduate
taught programmes and more on postgraduate research. As the Chairman
commented earlier, postgraduate research and teaching, particularly
postgraduate research, is perhaps where we should concentrate
more of the effort.
Q52 Helen Jones: When people come here
for higher education (or for any other form of education) you
rightly say that they look first of all for quality but they also
look at the experience that they will get. Bearing that in mind,
and we have heard of the eagerness of some universities to take
more and more overseas students simply because it is to their
financial benefit if they are from outside the EU, does there
come a tipping point in your view as recruiters, people who encourage
students to come here, where an institution has so many overseas
students that paradoxically people stop wanting to go there because
they are not getting the experience that they would have been
looking for?
Mr Butler: The London School of
Economics has 70% international students.[8]
Q53 Helen Jones: I was thinking of them
but I did not like to say.
Mr Butler: You will find that
it does depend a little bit on the institution.
Mr Green: There is a real issue
in the question you are raising and, as we were discussing earlier
on, there have been occasions where universities have worried
about the number of students from one country that are coming
to their institutions and occasionally there are courses which
are 90% populated by a single nationality. That is not healthy
from the point of view of the experience those students' gain
of the UK, so there is a real issue in what you raise. However,
in terms of the overall capacity it is a question of how you spread
that demand rather than concentrating it in certain universities
and that is one of the roles of the British Council in terms of
the education and counselling service that we provide, which we
have not really talked about so far, where in our offices overseas
students can come in and can not only access information through
hard materials and through the website but they can also have
discussions with counsellors who can talk to them and help to
advise them not all to go to Warwick or to Nottingham.
Q54 Helen Jones: But is there not going
to be a tension here between the counselling service that the
British Council is quite rightly putting into place and the desire
of the individual universities to get more and more cash? Have
you found any difficulty or have you any good experiences to relate
to the committee in getting the universities to work with you
in recruiting overseas students but also making sure that they
are fairly evenly spread around the system? There is a financial
imperative for some universities to say, "We will take more
and more overseas students". That can benefit them in the
short term but in the longer term it can damage our standing abroad
if it destroys the desire of people to come over here.
Mr Kemp: We have worked with many
of the universities and we do in country. We focus on delivering
through the country teams. There are some very good examples where
universities have a whole range of different means. For example,
Nottingham through its revenue from international students is
generating scholarships. It is using that scholarship money to
re-target in areas that they believe are under-represented. That
is one example. The China market is a classic. It has grown very
fast. The big concentration is on business and IT. 55% of Chinese
students coming here are in business and IT and, yes, it is a
bit of an uneven spread. What we see as our key role with the
UK institutions is to market more strongly the diversity of UK
education and that there are many other paths to rewarding employment
than an MBA. Therefore, we are identifying areas where there would
appear to be gaps and trying to work at marketing those.
Mr Butler: Taking the China example,
we have recently had some exhibitions and seminars related to
art and design which have gone throughout China and also more
recently on environmental technology, so we are trying to encourage
the Chinese to look at other subjects which are relevant to the
Chinese economy and their own career opportunities but are not
just stuck in the business and IT sector.
Q55 Helen Jones: You said earlier that
one of our aims in having overseas students here is to establish
friends for life and I think that is a very important part of
the process, but we will only have friends for life if students
have a good experience when they come over here. Apart from the
academic life have you done any research into any difficulties
that overseas students have experienced? Can you enlighten the
Committee about any of them? Where do we need to improve and where
are we doing well?
Mr Green: We commissioned some
research by someone who is an expert in marketing called Professor
Colin Gilligan. He produced some work on just that subject to
look at the performance of—
Q56 Chairman: Is he from Lancaster?
Mr Green: Sheffield.
Q57 Chairman: But you do quote another
professor who was from Lancaster in this report, do you not?
Mr Kemp: Correct.
Mr Green: He produced a very interesting
report, some of it quite critical of the sector, which the sector
found quite painful, but I think it had a salutary effect and
institutions took a lot of notice of his findings, which Neil
can outline in a moment, and they have taken some very significant
steps to address the issues he raised.
Mr Kemp: We have also done our
own research with MORI on looking at perceptions as students have
moved through the system and, surprise, surprise, in February
on a cold day, after starting up here with great hopes, international
students are at their lowest in terms of the perception of UK
and everything about it.
Q58 Helen Jones: So are the rest of us!
Mr Kemp: The UK students might
be going through the same thing and they suddenly realise that
exams might be coming up. Then we find that after they get back
home there is a very positive effect in terms of their reflection
on their time here. We must not be complacent though because there
is a big dip after students have been here a few months, after
the gap between their original expectations and what they are
finding. We are working with UKCOSA on funding research—and
DfES is involved in this as well—at looking at the changing
perceptions of international students as they go through that
period. We want to unpick that because it is at the centre of
the quality perception. Also, one of the biggest key influences
on students to come here is the current students. When they go
back home they are the ones who influence their friends and relatives
to come here and study.
Q59 Helen Jones: Have you done any research
on the difference between the student experience in big university
towns, for instance, Oxford and Cambridge, where people are used
to a lot of students, and their experience in smaller colleges
elsewhere in terms of not simply their academic experience but
also their social experience?
Mr Kemp: We have not. Also, the
problem is that London is such a magnet. It attracts a very large
percentage of the students. That said, I cannot for the life of
me think of one but you are right: it is an area we need to explore.
8 Note: The London School of Economics has
62% of international students, not 70%. Back
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