Latest international education news

Presenting new opportunities for foreign providers, the ELT market in India is set to nearly double by 2015 according to a report by The British High Commission in New Delhi. The vocational training (VET) segment of the market has the most potential, the report claims, as the government endeavours to up-skill the labour market.

There are certainly not high volumes coming to Australia. The university is looking at doing things very differently now. Not necessarily by cutting things, but we can’t just rely on going to exhibitions like we did over the past 10 years

The White House and Senate are reaching common ground on the issue of post-study work rights for foreign students. A week after his second inauguration, US President Barack Obama outlined plans to fast-track green cards for skilled science graduates of US universities, with a bipartisan group of senators unveiling similar proposals days earlier.

According to its Bureau of Immigration (BI), the Philippines welcomed 14% more foreign students in 2012 than the previous year, reflecting the country’s rapid rise as an affordable study destination. The bureau’s student desk approved 47,478 applications for student visas and permits, up from 41,443 in 2011.

International applications to UK universities rose 9.6% by the January deadline, UCAS revealed today, defying fears that tougher visa policies are damaging the country's appeal as a study destination. Observers welcomed the growth but cautioned that new interviews of students by border officials this year could harm final enrolments.

Keen to lessen the financial strain on home pupils, a private tertiary college in Ireland has hit upon a novel idea: to waive fees for any Irish student who provides lodging to an international student. Griffith College is promoting the offer in Brazil, China and Russia among other markets.

Orbital Education is to open a new international school in Shanghai, China in September. The private education company, established in 2005 by serial entrepreneur, Kevin McNeaney, has developed quickly and this will be the fifth international school in as many countries.

As a parting gift in her last week as US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has launched a permanent foundation to build Sino-US exchange in education for years to come. The 100,000 Strong Foundation follows the similarly named programme of 2010, designed to increase the number of Americans studying in China to 100,000 by 2014. 12 times more Chinese study in America than the other way round.

The British Council has confirmed it will work closely with the new unit to promote offshore education exports, Education UK, which will share its name with the "student-facing" brand that the British Council has operated since 2005. A suggestion of a cross-sectoral quality kitemark was also made.

An automated system for international students and agents applying to UK universities has been launched in a bid to speed up the process and stamp out fraud. Centurus ONE cuts out paper-based processing and creates a "data trail". It has already been used to process 2,000 applications at the University of Glyndwr’s London campus.

In a move to get more Norwegians studying in developing countries, the government will offer substantial financial aid for a period of four as opposed to three years from next academic year. Grants and loans worth more than US$40,000 a year will be made available to stem stagnant interest in studying in countries such as Russia and China.

When our minister for tertiary education goes overseas with vice-chancellors and talks to the people in China, Indonesia or Singapore, all they want to talk about is skills, not higher education

A delegation of universities from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia was in the UK last week, seeking to recruit British students into the Canadian university system. They were taking advantage of the hike in tuition fees at British universities, which is seeing students increasingly look abroad.

In an explosive exchange between Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor at UEA and Glyn Williams, Director of Migration Policy at the Home Office this week, Williams countered criticism over a mixed message on migration policy and said UK HE should move away from an obsession with eliminating students from the migrant count.