International college students a growing market
As you may have suspected from the long delay since my last column, I have been traveling again. I spent several weeks in Kyiv, Ukraine, lecturing at the Kyiv National Economics University (KNEU), the largest school of business and economics in Ukraine. University officials had asked me to talk about issues of international competitiveness and the role their school could play in economic development and innovation. Those are the same things that our universities in Northern New York are wrestling with as well. I think some of the ideas that came out of the work in Ukraine might be interesting to economic developers, business people and higher education officials in Northern New York as well as their counterparts in Ukraine.
Higher education represents one of the most promising areas of international trade and economic development we have. If you read my column in September 2010, you might remember that foreign students at American colleges and universities bring in almost $18 billion each year to the national economy. The more than 600 foreign students who attend our Northern New York schools each year are worth an estimated $1.6-plus million annually to our economy. It’s not that money that really excites me, however. It’s what the possibilities look like.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that the global population of college students will rise from 97 million last year to 167 million by 2025. This increase will be driven by increased access to and interest in higher education among students in emerging economies, as well as the growing interest among older workers in continuing education. Rising populations, rising incomes and the development of knowledge industries in more nations means we will have a huge demand for higher education across the planet.
While global demand for higher education is expected to increase by 70 percent over the next 14 years, many national university systems lack the capacity to provide global-quality education to these new students. As any student in my international business course knows, when you can’t get what you want domestically, it is time to look globally. KNEU and other Ukrainian universities are already exploring the possibilities of this trend and we need to do so as well, if we want to profit from it.
Our local colleges and universities will argue that they are already doing this, recruiting more than 600 foreign students per year. That is a good start but can’t we do more? Many of those 167 million students in 2025 are not going to be able to afford the costs of traveling to Northern New York and paying tuition rates that are much higher than what we locals pay. Nor are there many scholarships or other funding sources to help them. That means they won’t come here, but rather, may go to KNEU where the education is very good and prices are much lower. That means KNEU gains the opportunity to expand and grow and improve their competitive position while we, at least the SUNY schools, face starvation budgets and an increasing centralization of decisions in Albany.
So what do we do? One researcher, writing from London in the Chronicle of Higher Education, suggests that partnerships between universities in different nations and domestic governments offer the best chance to capture larger streams of international students. We need government policies that attract foreign students and we also need universities and university systems that are innovative in how they serve those students.
For the SUNY system, how about a central recruiting program that includes things like combined recruiting trips and materials, training for individual campuses on best practices for recruiting international students and more financial support for campus efforts? This could also include support for the development of innovative foreign education models that include things like partnerships with foreign schools and distance-learning options.
Back in the 1990s, SUNY launched an online learning program called the SUNY Learning Network (SLN). This was a key element in spurring the development of online courses at many SUNY campuses, including JCC, which probably could not have done so much so quickly on its own. Can we do something similar with foreign student programs? It sure beats trying to survive on tuition and declining state payments.
For our colleges and universities, can we do something jointly without waiting for government or SUNY to help us? Each of the admissions officers whom I interviewed for my column on foreign students last year told me they wanted to recruit more foreign students. Is there a way we can share some strategies and resources for this? Each school pursues a slightly different approach so there may be great opportunities in cooperation. Sharing a rationalized foreign recruitment program between JCC, SUNY Canton and SUNY Potsdam makes more sense than sharing a president. Throw in St. Lawrence and Clarkson Universities and we get even better opportunities.
For economic developers, can you look for ways to facilitate this process through both resources and strategic cooperation? The current $1.6 million we get from those students each year is the equivalent of 80-plus professional jobs in our community. How much would you spend in time and money to attract a manufacturing business that promised to create 80 high-paying jobs?
The students and faculty at KNEU and other international universities are every bit as smart and competitive as are students in New York and they are determined to build a global university that attracts foreign students from other emerging economies. They face lots of barriers to success, most of which will seem familiar to us — a shortage of money, weak support from their government and a lot of inertia within their own organization. Still, I am betting on them. Given a choice, I would rather partner with them than compete head to head.
In Europe and Central Asia, 47 countries are aggressively pursuing something called the Bologna process. This is an effort to coordinate the design of courses and degree programs and make it easier for students and faculty to move between universities in these countries. The basic model they are working toward is almost identical to what is used in the U.S. today. As much of the world standardizes on a U.S.-style higher education model, we have a passing opportunity as a nation to dominate that market. In the north country, we have a competitive group of schools that could represent the industrial cluster we have sought so often and so fruitlessly in the manufacturing sector. How often do we get a chance like that?
