Challenges in Global Education

A friend of mine has recently written a short piece for a course in reply to the question “Describe what you think are the main challenges for your institution in terms of competitiveness in and relevance to global education.” She focussed on the cuts to UK education and the need to correctly define & target a market. Though I agreed with the second point, the former I saw as a bit of a red herring as though the cut of 35% to universities’ funding will affect research budgets and slightly UK student numbers rather than international education.  This got me thinking: what would my reply be within the 500 world limit set. So here goes:

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been engaging for years in ‘global education; this is here understood here as the involvement of those from outside the UK in a UK HEI’s education remit. This can take several forms including:
- Mobility of students INTO the UK
- Delivery of Education OUTSIDE the UK by a UK HEI
- Collaborative Education, delivered jointly by UK and international partners
Traditionally, UK universities have a single office mainly focussing on the first of these. Increasingly, ‘international’ is seen as forming part of curriculum, the mobility of students and the exchange of research by academics, all of which is delivered by multiple departments right across an institution. Perhaps, to be truly ‘global’ educators there is a need to focus on the processes behind this (and the process of globalisation) and therefore focus on the off-shore and collaborative education (points 2 and 3 above).

Institutions are challenged currently by their very understanding of ‘global education’; many have international policies which are often bureaucratic statements of utopic aspiration or false reviews of activity and do not really understand the situation. Part of the challenge facing a University is engaging and educating staff in this broader sense of ‘international’; at a time when staff are squeezed, there will be fewer staff to cover ‘core’ teaching and learning activity and not the broader set of activities needed to deliver a truly global education. Institutions need to be careful in defining a market which makes them stand out and the current practice of institutions delivering nearly all subjects should not continue: specialist and unique should become more important.

I see three medium-term threats to global education:
- Economic: With less funds available, will students have the money to travel or governments to support them (take the cancelling of Chevening Scholarships and various British Council streams).
- Security (terrorism will remain a risk and increased border security will make it harder for physical mobility to take place).
- Environmental (probably the longest issue but increases in air fares and fuel insecurities will threaten travel).
To combat this, HEIs need to plan that in the long term physical mobility may be limited or impossible and should invest in technology & remote provision in anticipation. What is key is that this will take imagination and creativity as well as an understanding that there will be failures. The main challenge for institutions with regard to global education may be learning to take a risk.

410 rather broad words but in a time when spending reviews are about to be announced, a new way needs to be found into Higher education.