A UK Guide to Enhancing the International Student Experience
09 March 2010
Breakfast Briefing, House of Commons Terrace Marquee
Seventy delegates attended yesterday’s launch, in the House of Commons, of the latest report from the UK HE International Unit, A UK Guide to Enhancing the International Student Experience.
The guide, written by i-graduate, is a practical guide for universities that uses data from the International Student Barometer (ISB), the flagship research tool of the International Graduate Insight Group (i-graduate).
The data convey what international students think is important and how satisfied they are with services provided. The views of domestic UK students and an international index provide context and benchmarking.
Delegates from government, industry, parliament and higher education attended the event, hosted by Gisela Stuart MP. Charles Kennedy MP, a former Fulbright Scholar and current Rector of Glasgow University, and Professor Colin Riordan, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex, gave entertaining accounts of their experiences as international students.
Charles Kennedy emphasised the need for early contact between international students and universities, even before they arrive – an echo of a point made in the guide. Satisfaction ratings were of unlimited importance, he said, particularly in light of rising student expectations. His time at Indiana University in the US as a Fulbright Scholar brought home to him the importance of human contact and the difference this can make to the overall experiences of students.
Professor Riordan spoke about his experiences as an international student in Germany, which at the time (the late 1970s) seemed a long way away. That was no longer the case, he said, with the development of communications technology.
He drew attention to the explicitly ‘student-centred’ nature of the guide and how, overall, the UK does well but that it often falls short of the top grade when measured against traditional and emerging competitors. He praised the guide’s focus on what UK universities can change and predicted that they would turn to it again and again (one university requested 100 copies).
The report’s findings were presented by Will Archer, Director of i-graduate.
He spoke briefly on the history of the ISB which has been running for five years and is used by almost every UK university. He highlighted some of the UK’s successes in student satisfaction. But he pointed out that most of the successes have not come as a result of major capital investment, but rather from staff engagement.
He noted that the government of Germany has committed €16bn for higher education internationalisation, a figure that dwarfs equivalent spending in the UK, as welcome as the latter is.
If we are generally doing well, he asked whether it was a case of ‘job done’.
The answer was a clear no: each new cohort of international students represented a fresh start and each individual had his or her own expectations. He rhetorically asked what level of satisfaction should satisfy the UK HE sector – 75%, 80%? Perhaps 90% was a reasonable cut-off. One could ask Akio Toyoda. Car of the Year 2009 was the Toyota Prius and it turns out that nine out of 10 of them work fine. Will concluded that excellence is a pursuit, not an achievement.
A question and answer session followed the presentations. Full report available HERE
The report is available to download from the secure area of the International Unit website HERE (UK universities only, login required).
Hard copies can be obtained at no cost by emailing elizabeth.farnell@international.ac.uk
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