Germany

The Saudi Arabian Cultural Attaché used his platform at the International Higher Education Forum to chide the UKHE sector into improving some aspects of its offer, despite providing an assurance that the high level of quality provision in general is appreciated.

China and India are expected to propel growth in postgraduate student mobility over the next decade in all leading study destinations according to forecasts by the British Council. The projection also shows Asia’s dominance of enrolments will wane as tertiary-aged populations decline in the region.

Figures from DAAD show that the number of international students in Germany increased by 7% last year to 300,000. DAAD says its goal of hosting 350,000 students by 2020 is "more than achievable"; getting half of all German students studying abroad in six years might be more challenging.

International House World Organisation has expanded its network of schools to include centres in Italy, Angola, Russia and Germany, bringing its total number of affiliate schools to 158. IHWO’s Chief Operating Officer Lucy Horsefield said: “Our organization is growing steadily at the moment".

The government- funded German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) recently released its Strategy 2020 which includes attracting 350,000 foreign students by 2020 and increasing the number of Germans who study abroad to 50%. It will also expand its network of branch offices overseas and enhance scholarships.

Both the UK and Germany are calling on the creative photography skills of international students to promote study opportunities in competitions with prizes worth £250 and €500 respectively. FDSV in Germany and the British Council in the UK are behind the promotions.

The biggest hurdle, or the organisation that spoke against agents the most, was NACAC. And now that problem's been eliminated, I think nobody's going to stop the development of quality work between universities and agents.

After three months of negotiations, a coalition agreement between Germany's biggest political parties has been reached. Among its objectives, the new government aims to increase international students studying in Germany to 350,000 by 2020 and increase outbound mobility to 50%.

Global University Systems (GUS) has gone public as the overarching group and brand that joins together operations including the well known LSBF business school enterprise. GUS's latest group member is GISMA Business School in Germany, rescued from insolvency.

German agency and publisher, flyOUT, has published its first multilingual app aimed at its target market that embark on an au pair experience overseas. The company decided to launch the app in German and English first, and because of a brisk take-up, a Spanish version of the app followed four weeks later.

The German government is to provide universities with the largest amount of funding for internationalisation projects ever. Eighteen universities will have access to €1m each over four years to develop partnerships with institutions overseas.

Demand to learn German in Spain has surpassed that of French for the first time, following a 15% spike in interest in the language last year. Driving the trend is a desire among learners to find work in Germany and escape high levels of unemployment at home, with fluency their only barrier.

The number of Indian students in Germany continues to rise thanks to a combination of low fees, internationalised universities and improved student work rights, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has claimed. Enrolments grew 19% in 2011-12 to nearly 6,000, with sources claiming the UK's tough new visa rules were driving the trend.

Less than half of language schools worldwide said their enrolments grew in the second quarter of 2012 compared with last year, according to the latest language travel survey from the Association of Language Travel Organisations (ALTO). Inversely, business was up for agents with 45% reporting growth over 41%.

The number of English-taught Masters courses available in Europe has risen dramatically in the last five years, according to research from the Institute of International Education (IIE), USA. The Netherlands and Germany top the list in terms of number of programmes offered.