The UK government today officially launched the HE Global Integrated Advisory Service, its new campaign to help boost UK higher education exports abroad and encourage more transnational education initiatives (such as twinning programmes, campuses abroad and even online learning).
Foreign Secretary William Hague and Universities and Science Minister David Willetts, unveiled details of the campaign including the full list of partners involved and the campaign website – a central resource through which operators can access detailed advice on expanding their activities overseas.
In a press release, Hague said: “By creating HE Global we are ensuring that UK institutions which wish to build international relationships and provide their expertise abroad have easy access to the best intelligence and assistance to enable them to significantly increase the value of international education over the next decade.”
With the UK restricting access to UK study opportunities for international students, it is clearly focusing its aims on building up revenue and market share via transnational education (TNE) initiatives. The UK is one of the leaders in TNE, but the department of Business, Innovation and Skills said HE Global would help it maintain an edge in an “increasingly crowded global higher education marketplace”.
The HE Global website explains that maintaining the UK’s edge has three benefits: “There is a consensus across government that engaging in and promoting international education… firstly presents potentially significant commercial opportunities; secondly, it is an important soft power tool which supports the UK’s image abroad; thirdly, integrally linked to the above, it is key to maintaining the reputation of the UK education sector as one of the best in the world.”
More than half of the £8.3billion in 2010 came from the spending of students and their families in the UK
Among other resources, HE Global will offer UK providers access to research on foreign market opportunities and information on how to tap financial support.
While more TNE activity will mitigate some of the expected losses in the UK because of a crackdown on migration, which international students have unfortunately been caught up in (between £2.4 billion-£3.6 billion by some estimates), it is unlikely to go far enough. According to Universities UK, more than half of the £8.3billion generated through the international activities of universities in 2010 came from the spending of students and their families in the UK.
