A presentation for DMU staff. Notes are available at: http://www.richard-hall.org/2011/12/07/internationalisation-student-voices-and-the-shock-doctrine-disrupting-business-as-usual/

1. Internationalisation and student voices:
a disruption of business-as-usual?
Richard Hall (rhall1@dmu.ac.uk, @hallymk1)

2. What is the relationship between
UK higher education,
internationalisation agendas and
student voices in a world that
faces significant disruption?

3. Is business-as-usual a
viable option?

4. a slice of HE
• 166 HEIs and 116 universities.
• 2007/8: participation for 18-30 years-old = 43%.
• 2008/9: 251,300 international students, EU = 117,660.
• Universities employ over 372,400 staff, or 1.2% of UK
workforce.
• Responsible for 353,900 jobs in other parts of the
economy.
• UK HE generates over £59bn of output for the UK
economy, including export earnings of £5.3bn.
UUK (2010). Submission to the 2010 Spending Review. http://bit.ly/9dwIqv

5. Large, complex, motive, geared
economically [it’s about resources]; is it
about people?
What counts as business-as-usual
[BAU]?

6. HEFCE (2012). Key Objectives. http://bit.ly/g2FZnP

7. http://bit.ly/jom3Ht

8. HEA, Strategic Plan 2012-16:
http://bit.ly/GDkuVd

9. The Treasury position, on shared services:
2.186 VAT: providers of education – The
Government will review the VAT exemption for
providers of education, in particular at university
degree level, to ensure that commercial universities
are treated fairly. (Finance Bill 2013)
HM Treasury (2012) http://bit.ly/GCRYCy

10. http://bit.ly/GI2nP4

11. The Treasury position, on technology and
research
a new £100 million fund to support investment
in major new university research facilities,
including through additional provisions. The
fund will allocate its first bids in 2012–13 and
will attract additional co-investment from the
private sector
HM Treasury (2012) http://bit.ly/GCRYCy

12. Issues of hegemony tied to economy
• The UK sells more brainpower per capita than anywhere else
in the world. In 2008, this amounted to £118 billion in knowledge
services – worth 6.3% of GDP (The Work Foundation, 2010).
• The UK has 1% of the world’s population but undertakes 5% of
the world’s scientific research and produces 14% of the world’s
most highly cited papers (UUK, 2010).
• HEIs are worth £59 billion to the UK economy annually and are
a major export earner. Through their international activities they
are one of the UK’s fastest growing sources of export earnings,
and last year bought in £5.3bn (UUK, 2009).

13. Growth, mobility and circuits
• There were 248,000 international students (excluding EU)
enrolled at UK HEIs in 2008/09. There were also 121,000
EU students the same year (HESA, 2010).
• Students from India make up 14% of all international
students (excluding EU) in UK HE. They are the fastest-
growing group: the 34,000 in 2008/09 represented a 31.5%
increase over the previous year (HESA, 2010).

14. Framing some issues for UK HE
“distinguish between credit or within-programme mobility (such
as Erasmus) and degree or whole-programme mobility where
the student moves abroad for an entire degree course. We
also distinguish mobility experiences at different levels
(undergraduate, postgraduate) and of different types (study
abroad, work placement etc).”
“Globally, student migration grows faster than overall
migration: the US and the UK are the top destinations for
degree mobility; China and India are the top origin countries.”
HEFCE (2010). International student mobility literature review: Final report.
http://bit.ly/c6be49

15. Global issues of mobility and circuits
• 2007: 2.8 million students were enrolled in HEIs outside their countries
of citizenship (up 4.6% on 2006). 11 countries hosted 71% of the world’s
mobile students (USA = 21.3%) (UNESCO, 2009).
• 2007: 42% of UK PGR students were from abroad (15% of global
share). This is more than its share of international students generally
(UK HE International Unit, 2008).
• 2008/09: 388,000 students studying for a UK qualification outside of
the UK. Of this number, 83% were non-EU students (HESA, 2010).
• 2009: 162 global HE branch campuses, up 43% on 2006 (USA = 50%;
Australia = 11%; UK = 10%). The number of countries hosting
international branch campuses grew, from 36 to 51 (OBHE, 2009).

16. Table 1: Top ten countries of origin of foreign students, 1975–2005
1975 1985 1995 2005
Country No. Country No. Country No. Country No.
Iran 33,021 China 42,481 China 115,871 China 343,126
US 29,414 Iran 41,083 South Korea 69,736 India 123,559
Greece 23,363 Malaysia 40,493 Japan 62,324 South Korea 95,885
Hong Kong 21,059 Greece 34,086 Germany 45,432 Japan 60,424
China 17,201 Morocco 33,094 Greece 43,941 Germany 56,410
UK 16,866 Jordan 24,285 Malaysia 41,159 France 53,350
Nigeria 16,348 Hong Kong 23,657 India 39,626 Turkey 52,048
Malaysia 16,162 South Korea 22,468 Turkey 37,629 Morocco 51,503
India 14,805 Germany 22,424 Italy 36,515 Greece 49,631
Canada 12,664 US 19,707 Hong Kong 35,141 US 41,181
Source: OECD and UNESCO data compiled in de Wit (2008: 33–34).

18. BAU: questions of global capital and power
Is there a balance between promoting inward and outward
mobility? How do foreign experiences enrich the curriculum
and global “knowing”? (Deliberately opposed to “the
knowledge economy”.)
Is high relative inward mobility a vindication of the quality of
the UK’s higher education system in the global market for HE?
Or is this merely post-colonialism in another guise? For whom
is this HE?
How does internationalisation impact the relative (im)mobility
of ‘non-traditional’ students?

19. BAU: some questions of political economy
To what extent does the economy own HE? How does this impact
the students’ experiences? See: http://bit.ly/gTJCYp
Overseas students’ fees contribute nearly £2bn of UK universities’
income. Is this a form of capitalist primitive accumulation? Or is it
tied to the transnational movement of global capital?
Research on trends from East Asian students (cf. Waters 2006;
2009) suggests that they and their families carefully strategise to
achieve ‘positional advantage’ in a crowded and increasingly
‘credentialised’ graduate labour market. Is UK HE contributing to
elitist, hegemonic positions abroad?

20. How are students and institutions
positioned inside this model of
business-as-usual?

21. Q. ‘What did, or do, you hope to gain as a result of study abroad?’
Descriptives:
•76%: greater confidence (68% males, 81% females)
•72%: better employment prospects (70% males, 73% females)
•66%: become more self-reliant (61% males, 70% females)
•61%: ‘better language skills’ (57% males, 64% females).
So:
10.greater shares of mobile females responding positively to the
various (perceived) benefits;
11.rise up the ranking list of ‘employment’ as a benefit; and
12.the failure to mention (beyond language acquisition) any direct
academic pay-off.
National Union of Students’ (2010). Student Experience Survey: http://bit.ly/3Eu0DR

22. What does this mean for UK HEIs
and their staff in a competitive,
global HE market?

23. http://bit.ly/eHXhjt

24. http://bit.ly/hTEa1H

25. http://bit.ly/ePTE38

27. Tension: institutional diversity
• Internationalisation in HE is a multi-faceted phenomenon
• Practice is experiental learning
• Cross-fertilisation between the disciplines promotes innovative
practice
• Global collaboration fosters effective, inclusive practice and rigorous
research
• As a key concept in the student learning experience
internationalisation requires collaboration between academic,
professional, support and managerial staff
Centre for Academic Practice and Research in Internationalisation of Higher Education,
at Leeds Metropolitan University (2010): http://bit.ly/dFv17Z

28. Leeds Metropolitan (2008). Internationalisation Strategy 2008 – 2012; World-wide horizons at
Leeds Met: http://bit.ly/haMeb7

29. Tensions: the
curriculum
Copy and paste culture, where plagiarism is rife. [The same claim
that is made of A-Levels.]
Yet there is a focus on contextual/personalised understanding in high
performing Asian nations’ pedagogic practices (Oates, 2010:
http://bit.ly/ajbCp2). c.f. Shanghai test scores: http://wapo.st/eYTUcq
And there are some who would claim that, in any case, there are
common “reform elements that are replicable for school systems
everywhere... to achieve significant, sustained, and widespread gains
in student outcomes.” (McKinsey and Co., 2010: http://bit.ly/b9JJtb)

30. Some curriculum stuff: comparative issues
http://bit.ly/fevnWp

31. Some curriculum stuff: sharing stories
http://bit.ly/fAPeFM

32. Some curriculum stuff: transfer
http://bit.ly/hF8efY

33. So maybe this is about something else? More humane,
maybe? It’s not just the (knowledge) economy (and efficiency),
stupid.
Maybe we need to discuss student-as-producer, rather than
consumer, irrespective of cultural differences.
Maybe there is something here on power and the production
of the curriculum/world at scale.
Maybe commonalities are more important in a world that faces
significant disruption.

34. The Student Voice
The HEA’s approach to student engagement considers students
as active partners in their learning experience. It promotes the
value of student engagement and shares effective practice across
the HE sector. Projects carried out this year have helped to
ensure that the student voice has been heard on topics ranging
from sustainability to excellence in teaching. The HEA has
worked with HEIs to ensure that all students, whatever their
background, can benefit from inclusive teaching practices.
HEA (2011). Annual Report: http://bit.ly/HYUDVw

35. Equality Challenge Unit (2010). Internationalisation
and equality and diversity in HE: merging identities
http://bit.ly/e2xkbL

36. cash and culture
…the university recruits too many
international students because they pay
high fees… so many courses now have
considerable foreign numbers that do
not talk to the local students…

37. us and them?
International students have to make an
effort to integrate themselves as well…
international students… slow down the
learning process…
…sometimes we don’t understand why
they smile…

38. stereotypes
International students… always form
their own groups and segregate
themselves from the Australian society
and never integrating… International
perspectives are also that ‘we pay we
pass’ and therefore never put in effort
in uni…

39. equality
Due to current politics and the result of
historical situation universities in the UK
have to face high number of international
students. In order to create a well
working system this diversity must be
based on equality.

40. NUS (2010). Internationalising students unions in HE. http://bit.ly/i6MZRR

41. alienation
I ask why do I need to pay more for my tuition
fees since I am from abroad when all the services,
resources, time, etc, rendered to me are the same
as my British and EC contemporaries… Am I also
not “contributing” to the university in any way?

42. safety
You [gravitate] towards people from your own culture
because you think ‘…oh foreigners, I don’t know what
it is going to be like talking to them, I am safe talking
to someone of my own race’.
Chinese international students refer to Australian
students of Chinese background as ‘bananas’
because in appearance they have yellow skin, but
inside they have the ideas of white people, they
behave like the local people not like people from Asia.

43. the Other
some programmes of study tend to be mono-cultural,
comprising large numbers of Chinese or Indian students
who have little or no opportunity to engage with home
students in the campus learning environment.
the challenge... is breaking down barriers to facilitate the
free exchange of ideas, different world views, etc, to
counter the stereotyped images so frequently portrayed
by the global media

44. A tendency to articulate internationalisation in its traditional guise =
partnerships/exchanges, which enable students to experience
difference but also to attract more students to the university.
Recruitment of international staff = a key element of
internationalisation, where students note diversity of staff coming
together to discuss how to teach international students.
Students acknowledge the legitimacy of the HEI as a business that
needs to maintain good reputation and international standing
through a student-centred approach/a quality product to
international customers.
An ‘international feel’ that sets the HEI apart from other institutions.

45. But the internationalisation of HE
does not take place in a bubble.

46. Disruption
1. Control and management of flows of ‘economic
migrants’/asylum-seekers
3. HE and post-colonialism
5. HE in the natural world

51. Very little of the detail, the human density, the
passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the
awareness of even those people whose
profession it is to report the Arab world.
Edward Said, in The Nation (2010): http://bit.ly/gAuPqz

52. A key message is the need to manage diversity
rather than simply recruit ever expanding
numbers of international students which may
result in widespread student failures on hostile
campuses where various social groups are
viewed negatively.
Equality Challenge Unit, 2010: http://bit.ly/emsYwg

53. HE framed by austerity politics:
eliding an attack on the public sector, and
protection of a hegemonic position, with a
fear of the other: http://bit.ly/dQRovN

54. Mobile students represent a ‘privileged’ selection. See:
http://bit.ly/hL5y6Z
For students coming from poor countries, the wish to convert a
student visa into long-term or permanent residence – so-called
‘student switchers’ (Robertson 2010) – is a rational life-strategy.
Some receiving countries keen to recruit good students from any
country, to fill gaps in their national labour market (Hazen and
Alberts 2006; Gribble 2008)
The increasing internationalisation of skilled and professional
labour markets frames the danger that the UK will produce
proportionally fewer multilingual, multicultural graduates than
other competitor countries (http://bit.ly/vRyJH).

58. http://bbc.in/fu68Ui

59. Disruption
There is a strong correlation between energy use and
GDP. Global energy demand is on the rise yet oil
supply is forecast to decline in the next few years.
There is no precedent for oil discoveries to make up
for the shortfall, nor is there a precedent for
efficiencies to relieve demand on this scale. Energy
supply looks likely to constrain growth.
Global emissions currently exceed the IPCC 'marker'
scenario range. The Climate Change Act 2008 has
made the -80%/2050 target law, yet this requires a
national mobilisation akin to war-time. Probably
impossible but could radically change the direction of
HE in terms of skills required and spending available.

61. I=PxAxT
The impact of human activities (I) is determined by the overall
population (P), the level of affluence (A) and the level of technology (T).
Even as the efficiency of technology improves, affluence and population scale up
the impacts. [See: http://bit.ly/cldoaZ]
61

62. What does this mean for mobility?
What does this mean for global competition?
What does this mean for relatively high cost,
energy insecure economies?

63. Repercussions for BAU
 New meanings and measures of success
 Limits on materials, energy, wastes and land use?
 More meaningful prices
 More durable, reparable goods
 Fewer status goods
 More informative advertising
 Better screening of technology
 More efficient capital stock
 More local, less global
http://managingwithoutgrowth.com
 Reduced inequality http://www.steadystate.org/CASSEFAQs.html
 Less work, more leisure
 Education for life, not just work

64. Some possible outcomes in the next 10-20 years?
From 2014, emergency investments required in new energy sources as oil
declines and existing power stations decommissioned.
Significant increase in cost of energy = Increase in cost of living. Problem
with global food supplies. Increased (student) poverty?
Shift from mitigation to adaptation efforts.
Decrease/suspension of democracy.
Increase in resource wars drains public funds.
De-growth in developed countries.
2008-09 = 'peak' of public spending on education.
Contraction in HE sector (real estate/staff/students). “Uneconomic.”
Growth in informal and/or non-institutional education.
Increased spending on STEM at cost of all else. Unfailing faith in tech.

65. Capital
In this way, and following Bourdieu’s notion of ‘forms of
capital’ (Bourdieu 1986), students who move to study in an
international arena, especially if they attend high-prestige
universities, accumulate multiple and mutually-reinforcing
forms of capital – mobility capital (cf. Murphy-Lejeune
2002), human capital (a world-class university education),
social capital (access to networks, ‘connections’), cultural
capital (languages, intercultural awareness) and,
eventually, economic capital (high-salary employment).
HEFCE (2010). International student mobility literature review: Final report:
http://bit.ly/c6be49

66. Is HE resilient in the face of disruption?
Do our approaches to internationalisation
and the place of students in HE limit re-
invention?

70. the ‘contact hypothesis’ suggests that rather than
intercultural encounters automatically increasing
intercultural competence, they can reinforce stereotypes
and prejudices if critical incidents are not evaluated on
cognitive, affective and behavioural levels. Students need
to be able to learn about ‘differences’ and get to know
each other with sufficient intimacy as to be able to discern
common goals and personal qualities. This in turn
suggests reflection on individual and collective social
experiences with people from other cultures
Equality Challenge Unit, 2010: http://bit.ly/emsYwg

71. It’s not like we can’t do this (however loaded):
UN
IPCC
Human Genome Project
Participatory Action Research Projects
Student solidarity
See, Chatham House (2011). Asia and Europe: Engaging for a Post-Crisis World:
http://bit.ly/fyrgkR

72. So what might this mean for student
voices in HE?
Can the voices of international students
help HE become more resilient?

73. Resilience: adaptation not BAU
“the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and
reorganise while undergoing change, so as to retain
essentially the same function, structure, identity and
feedbacks”
Rob Hopkins (2009). Transition Culture: http://bit.ly/3ugobl
Systemic diversity, modularity, feedback

74. resilience at scale
“we have a choice between reliance on
government and its resources, and its approach
to command and control, or developing an
empowering day-to-day community resilience.
Such resilience develops engagement,
education, empowerment and encouragement”
DEMOS (2010): http://bit.ly/15yRl9

75. Student-as-producer
The Student as Producer project re-engineers the relationship
between research and teaching. This involves a reappraisal of the
relationship between academics and students, with students
becoming part of the academic project of universities rather than
consumers of knowledge.
“The educator is no longer a delivery vehicle and the institution
becomes a landscape for the production and construction of a
mass intellect in commons.”
Neary and Winn (2009). The student as producer: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/1675/

76. Student-as-producer
collaborative relations – teaching and research networks;
refashioning in fundamental ways the nature of the university;
redesign the organizing principle, (i.e. private property and
wage labour), through which academic knowledge is currently
being produced;
open, collaborative initiatives.
Neary and Winn (2009). The student as producer: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/1675/

77. Towards a curriculum for resilience?
• Complexity and increasing uncertainty in the world
demands resilience
• Integrated and social, rather than a subject-driven
• Engaging with uncertainty through projects that involve
diverse voices in civil action
• Discourses of power – co-governance; co-production?
• Authentic partnerships, mentoring and enquiry, in
method, context, interpretation and action
• How does our international experience inform
resilience and our work at scale?

78. Resilient HE: what is to be done?
In the face of disruption what should be done?
• The purpose of HEIs
• The roles of students/staff
• The place of openness
• The design/delivery of the curriculum
• How does our international experience inform
resilience and our work at scale?

79. Are there other ways of producing knowing? What authority does HE/do
universities have? How relevant are fixed institutions/programmes in a
disrupted world?
How do internationalised student voices help to adapt to disruption? In a
knowing world, rather than a knowledge economy, what does curriculum
innovation mean?
Does a pedagogy of production need to start with the principle that we need
to consume less of everything? What does this mean for ownership of the
institution at scale [local, regional, global]?
How can internationalised student voices help in the struggle to re-invent
the world?
See: http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/a-question/

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