Director of The UK Higher Education International Unit, Vivienne Stern, has bold ambitions to evolve the IU brand. She talks to The PIE about her plans to invest in scholarships, promote outbound mobility and influence policy further to promote UK universities internationally.
The PIE: Tell me about your role and the functions of the IU.
VS: I’m the Director of the UK Higher Education International Unit. Our job is to represent UK universities internationally and help them meet their international aims. We broker sector-level agreements – as in the case of Science without Borders; influence policy in the UK and overseas and we provide excellent access to information and expertise for those who work in UK universities.
We have a particular focus on creating opportunities for international staff in universities to get together to learn from each other – through our Communities of Practice; expert-led seminars and programmes like Go International, which encourages UK students to study abroad and HE Global, which supports transnational education.
Finally we create opportunities for our universities to meet counterparts and potential partners overseas. For example in the next few months we will take outward delegations to India and Indonesia to meet university leaders and government figures there, and welcome delegations from India, Chile, and Mexico to the UK.
“In the next few months we will take outward delegations to India and Indonesia to meet university leaders and government figures there”
The PIE: How is the IU funded?
VS: We are part of Universities UK. However, most of our grant funding currently comes from government, via the four national funding councils for higher education – HEFCE, the SFC, HEFCW and DELNI. We also receive funding from Guild HE and from the QAA and Higher Education Academy. Over the last few years we have started to take on some major contracts to deliver scholarship schemes for other governments – including the Brazilian Science without Borders programme.
The PIE: Tell me about your plans to evolve the perception of the IU, especially for stakeholders overseas.
VS: The UK university sector is one of the best in the world. But we’re in danger of losing ground in terms of the way we are perceived, particularly in some fast developing countries like India. Our competitors have got their acts together, bringing government agencies and other bodies to pull in the same direction. The UK can seem a bit disjointed and disorganised by comparison – with lots of organisations all working in their own ways to support universities – it can be confusing for universities let alone overseas partners. It doesn’t help that while one part of government supports universities internationally, another part seems hell-bent on making it more difficult to attract students to study here.
Even if we can’t change all the things about visa policy that we might like to see changed – we can do a better job of co-ordinating the things we do to promote UK universities overseas, and support them at home. Together we’ve been putting a huge amount of effort into working out how the bits of the jigsaw fit together: the IU, the British Council, UKTI, the embassy network and the research councils. We’re seeing some really positive results.
I want the IU to play a clear role – representing universities and acting on their behalf – complementing and adding value to what other bodies do rather than cutting across them.
The PIE: You’ve often said that despite regulatory changes and challenges for the sector, it’s an exciting time for UK HE. Can you expand on that?
VS: One of the things that strikes me in the many opportunities I get to talk to representatives from governments around the world is how much appetite there is for working with UK universities in countries where we really don’t have well established links. And how much goodwill there is towards UK universities. The kind of statements people make about the quality of our HE sometimes make me feel slightly sheepish, they’re so effusive!
“There are people in influential positions around the world who have experienced UK HE and loved it”
I was speaking to somebody from the Turkish Embassy recently and he talked about how he’d seen the quality of the UK HE system with his own eyes. And that kind of things makes you think, oh gosh we’re so lucky, we’ve got something we should be genuinely proud of. And I think we have to be very careful of that reputation, we have to mean it, we have to make sure that we put energy into preserving that reputation for quality.
The reality is there are people in influential positions around the world who have experienced UK HE and loved it and there are ambassadors out there, and I think that’s brilliant. And then there’s some new appetite in the UK government for backing universities up in their international activities. So for me it seems like a great moment to be involved in this.
The PIE: What could the UK do better in terms of promoting its offer to international students?
VS: I think the answer to that is not so different to the solution we came up with through the Prime Minister’s Initiatives in the early 2000s. We need a good simple front door so that it is easy to find your way to what you need from the UK university sector; a brand which we all get behind and work together to promote; and investment in scholarships – including for outward mobility so that the UK is seen as a partner not a poacher.
The IU is going to work closely with the British Council to build on the success of the Education UK brand under PMI 1 and 2, but we need the government to help by investing some serious cash in marketing the UK internationally. Universities all do this on their own account, but since PMI 1 and 2 we haven’t had a sustained, co-ordinated national marketing campaign of the type which Australia, Germany, the US and Canada operate. GREAT is great – but as far as I can see it is not quite doing that job.
“We need the government to help by investing some serious cash in marketing the UK internationally”
The PIE: Tell me about the recent MoU in Peru?
VS: We have just signed an agreement with the government of Peru to administer a scheme to bring postgraduate students from modest financial backgrounds to study in the UK. We hope to welcome the first students in September, if the details are finalised in time. The aspiration is to bring up to 200 students a year to the UK through this scheme – but we have our work cut out to promote the opportunity to Peruvian students because the UK is not yet a favoured destination in Peru. We’re hoping that the scheme will raise our profile there – which is important because I believe the UK needs to diversify in terms of recruitment of international students.
The PIE: Can we expect to see more MoUs in the future and if so, which countries are high on the list for collaboration?
VS: Yes. We see a real appetite, particularly for postgraduate schemes. We’re providing a new service to make it easier for postgraduate scholars in 15 countries to find their way through the UK system as part of our role in the delivery of the Newton Fund.
The aim is purely and simply to increase the number of excellent postgraduate students who choose to study in the UK. I think it is something that the International Unit is uniquely well placed to do, with the support and involvement of UK universities themselves so it fits very well with my idea that we should make a clear and distinct contribution in the jigsaw of bodies I mentioned. We’re focusing particularly on Newton-funded countries because it makes sense to concentrate our limited resources on countries which are high on everyone’s priority list. The challenge is not to spread ourselves too thinly.
