Volume 1 Number 8 December 2011
introduction
This is the final briefing for the 2011 Joining the Dots series. It is necessarily concise and is designed to offer an entrée into the 2012 series. It does this by presenting a snapshot of statistics relating to international students in higher education. Rather than simply focusing on the ebbs and flows of international students in the Australian higher education sector, the briefing provides a global picture, contextualising the broader market forces which impact Australian institutions. The briefing assumes that readers already have some knowledge of the international student market in Australia and does not therefore present an introduction to the topic. Those who would like further details should instead refer to the plethora of academic resources already available (Marginson, 2011; Ziguras
& McBurnie, 2011, particularly in relation to the Asia- Pacific region) and consult the Australian Government’s international education arm, Australian Education International [AEI], at http://www.aei.gov.au.
This briefing draws exclusively on data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), which provides a rich data resource, one that is freely available and yet can be overlooked in discussions of Australian higher education policy (see http://www.uis.unesco.org/
Education/ for access to this data). The international student snapshot is presented in order to highlight the value of this data and to show the relative global presence of Australia in the international student market. The most recently available and internationally
International students
snapshot
A global picture
in This issUE
The wide distribution of international students
Almost every way the data on international student mobility is cut …
P3
international student distribution in context
The UIS data for international students in higher education provides an interesting tool for contextualising the in-flow and out-flow of students …
P5
a provider of international education, particularly to students from the Asia-Pacific region. It also provides an indication of the increasing competition for international students which Australia is
facing, as places traditionally considered ‘source countries’ develop their capacity as destinations for international study.
This briefing examines:
• international student numbers in Australia relative to other nations;
• UNESCO net flow indicators from a comparative and global perspective; and
• detailed information on the origins of
international students coming to Australia and to our neighbours.
The main findings shown here are:
UNESCO data confirm that Australia is a key power in the world of international student provision.
There are more than 100 nations hosting international students around the globe – while not at the same volume of the largest few providers, many countries host substantial numbers of international students.
Australia’s net flow of international students is one of the highest in the world, even when calculated in the context of the total size of the higher education sector.
Australia’s international student market is heavily reliant on Asia and the Pacific – accounting for nearly 80 per cent of the cohort in Australia.
Students from Asia travel in substantial numbers to a large variety of different countries for higher education, meaning that the scope of competition for students in this region now and in the future is significant.
The wide distribution of international students
Almost every way the data on international student mobility is cut, Australia emerges as one of the world powers for international education in higher education provision. Figure 1 presents the raw data on international student numbers, incorporating the individual national figures for 109 countries.
As the graph shows, Australia is the third largest provider globally.
In total, the UNESCO data records 109 countries across the globe that were hosting international students pursuing tertiary education qualifications in 2009. Figure 2 provides a world map of the spread of international students. It illustrates the remarkable number and extent of countries across the world which are equipped to enrol international students. The number of students hosted is indicated by the colours in the legend. Countries shaded grey are either not host countries or not recorded in the UNESCO data.
700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 Number of international students studying in country 0
Host Country
USA UK Australia France Germany Russia Japan Canada Italy China South Africa Austria Republic of Korea Spain Malaysia Singapore New Zealand Ukraine Egypt Switerland United Arab Emirates Belgium Cuba Czech Republic Sweden Jordan Netherlands Lebanon Greece Kyrgyzstan Turkey Saudi Arabia Norway Poland Thailand Brazil Hungry China, Macao SAR Ireland Finland Denmark Chile Kazakhstan Serbia Romania Cyprus Bulgaria China, Hong Kong SAR Portugal Bahrain Kuwait Morocco Fiji Yemen Azerbaijan Slovakia Algeria Belarus Other countries
figure 1: Number of international students by host country, tertiary education provision (ISCED 5 and 6), 2009 (countries hosting more than 5,000 students listed)
Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS)
Table 1 provides further detail on the size of the international student cohorts hosted by particular countries. It shows that 13 countries host at least 50,000 international students, with a further 32 hosting between 10,000 and 50,000. Of the 109 countries recorded in the data only a marginal number of these (25) have provision numbers smaller than 1,000 students.
In all, the data in Figure 1, Figure 2 and Table 1 help to highlight two key points – first, that Australia is a key player in the global market for international students;
and second, that despite the large share a few nations have in this market, there are a substantial number of countries that host large groups of international students within their higher education systems.
Table 1: Countries hosting international students by size of international student cohort, tertiary education (ISCED 5 and 6), 2009
number of international students
(range) number of countries
more than 100,000 7
50,000 to 99,000 6
25,000 to 49,000 13
10,000 to 24,900 19
5,000 to 10,000 13
1,000 to 4,999 26
500 to 999 7
30 to 499 18
Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS)
international student distribution in context
The UIS data for international students in higher education provides an interesting tool for contextualising the in-flow and out-flow of students while keeping the overall size of the system in perspective. The ‘net flow ratio’ provides a measure of the balance between incoming international students that the country hosts and outgoing domestic students (i.e. students leaving the country to become an international student elsewhere), expressed as a percentage of all tertiary education students in the country.
The net flow ratio for 27 countries, all hosting more than 10,000 international students is displayed in Figure 3. It shows that apart from the Chinese Special Administrative Region of Macao, Australia has the largest net flow ratio of the large international host countries. This highlights the importance of international students to Australian higher education in terms of relative size of the sector. It also provides some perspective on the relatively small proportion of students in Australia who undertake study abroad.
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
-10.0
Net flow ratio (%) China, Macao SAR Australia Austria UK New Zealand Singapore Switzerland France Belguim Denmark USA Cuba Sweden Norway Japan Netherlands Finland Italy Spain Chile Brazil Thailand Malaysia China Greece Republic of Korea Ireland
figure 3: Net flow ratio of international tertiary education students (ISCED level 5 and 6) by selected countries, 2009
international student movement in our region
Analysis of Australia’s international student cohort by region of the world is displayed in Table 2. The table shows that Australian higher education providers are attracting substantial numbers of students from all parts of the globe. However, with 79.1 per cent of all international students originating from Asia (either East Asia and the Pacific, or ‘the rest of Asia’) the ongoing importance of this region to Australian institutions is clear.
The UIS data allows for tracking of the key countries of destination for students of each nation. For this briefing, the focus is on Asia and the Pacific. Within source countries in Asia, the choice of destination for
international students varies greatly. Table 3 presents a detailed insight into the choices of Asian international students by country of origin and most popular country of destination, and highlights the complexity of the market. It is important to note in examining this table that while the largest host nations (USA, UK and Australia) are frequently among the top few destination countries, there are dozens of other key ‘players’
within this region.
Table 3 shows that 23 different host countries appear among the most popular destinations for international students from Asian and Pacific countries. This highlights the diversity of pathways and the number of
Table 2: International students in Australian tertiary education (ISCED level 5 and 6), by region of origin, 2009
inbound international student origin number of students
share of international students* (%)
from Africa 7,695 3.0
from North America, Central America and Caribbean 7,996 3.1
from South America 2,657 1.0
from East Asia and the Pacific 154,662 60.0
from the rest of Asia 49,251 19.1
from Europe 10,757 4.2
from Oceania 4,544 1.8
from unspecified region and country 20,075 7.8
Total 257,637 100.0
*percentage share of international students in Australia.
Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS)
Table 3: International students by country of origin and most popular destinations for tertiary education (ISCED 5 and 6), Asia and the Pacific, 2009 (number of students per destination in brackets)
Country number
students abroad Destination no.1 Destination no.2 Destination no.3 Destination no.4 Destination no.5 China 510,314 U.S.A. (124,225) Japan (79,394) Australia
(70,357) U.K. (47,033) Rep. of Korea (39,309) india 195,107 U.S.A. (101,563) U.K. (34,065) Australia
(26,573)
New Zealand (5,710)
Russian Fed.
(4,314)
south Korea 125,165 U.S.A. (73,832) Japan (24,850) Australia (6,796) U.K. (4,277) Germany (4,105)
Malaysia 53,121 Australia
(19,970) U.K. (12,697) U.S.A. (5,844) Russian Fed.
(2,516) Japan (2,147) Japan 44,768 U.S.A. (28,783) U.K. (3,871) Australia (2,701) France (1,847) Germany (1,778)
Viet nam 44,038 U.S.A. (12,612) Australia (7,648) France (5,803) Russian Fed.
(3,518) Japan (2,895) China, hong
Kong sAR 32,944 Australia
(12,925) U.K. (9,600) U.S.A. (8,192) Canada (1,578) China, Macao SAR (387)
indonesia 32,346 Australia
(10,205) U.S.A. (7,386) Malaysia (7,325) Japan (1,788) Germany (1,546)
iran 31,542 U.S.A. (3,475) Malaysia (3,475) U.K. (2,849) Germany (2,561) Canada (2,086)
Pakistan 30,940 U.K. (9,609) U.S.A. (5,211) Australia (2,844) Sweden (2,420) Canada (1,342) Thailand 24,805 U.S.A. (8,592) U.K. (4,674) Australia (4,377) Japan (2,193) Malaysia (976) nepal 22,291 U.S.A. (11,391) Australia (3,900) Japan (1,457) India (1,252) Cyprus (829)
singapore 19,633 Australia
(10,394) U.S.A. (3,923) U.K. (3,188) Malaysia (606) Canada (355) Bangladesh 18,672 U.K. (3,488) U.S.A. (2,662) Australia (2,380) Cyprus (2,085) Japan (1,683) sri Lanka 16,148 Australia (4,296) U.K. (3,553) U.S.A. (2,927) Japan (1,098) Malaysia (892) Philippines 9,719 U.S.A. (4,157) Australia (1,291) U.K. (1,093) Japan (583) Malaysia (278)
Myanmar 5,005 Russian Fed.
(1,034) Thailand (999) Japan (922) U.S.A. (656) Australia (495)
Laos 4,582 Viet Nam (2,435) Thailand (1,301) Japan (264) Australia (167) France (117)
new Zealand 4,530 Australia (2,393) U.S.A. (1,056) U.K. (481) Japan (84) Canada (76) Afghanistan 3,810 Iran, Isl. Rep.
(676) Turkey (509) U.S.A. (400) Germany (278) Russian Fed.
(228) Cambodia 3,675 Thailand (984) France (546) Viet Nam (388) Australia (366) U.S.A. (347) solomon islands 3,132 Fiji (2,747) Australia (119) New Zealand
(53) Cuba (50)
genuine competitors in the market on which Australian higher education is heavily dependent.
For Australia, while it remains one of the ‘big fish’
in the international student scene, growth in the size, quality, and infrastructure for hosting international students in the future is likely to be substantial, thus signalling a warning to Australian providers that the number of host nations is growing, as is their capacity to compete for students. Such trends have also been highlighted recently in the Institute of International Education’s Project Atlas (Bhandari, 2011). A Joining the Dots briefing in 2012 will examine the growth trajectory of international student populations across different countries to explore this issue in more detail.
Using the data in Table 3 and extracting the examples of two countries, the pie charts in Figure 4 illustrate the top five destinations for international students from two of Australia’s largest source markets – China and India. This illustration shows that there is significant competition among host countries for these students and importantly that even the major host countries for these two source countries include those which are non-English speaking.
USA 124, 255
Japan 79,394 Australia
70,357 UK 47,033 South Korea 39,309
USA 101,563 Australia
26,573 UK 47,033 New Zealand 5,710 Russia 4,314
India China
figure 4: Top five destination countries for students from China and India, tertiary education (ISCED 5 and 6), 2009
Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS)
Conclusion
This brief examination of data on international student flows across the world has served to highlight the large stake that Australia has built-up in this area. This success is well documented and the contribution of this cohort to the Australian economy is significant.
However, the figures displayed here reveal that competition for the international student market is not simply limited to a few large, English-speaking nations. The number of countries across the world that host international students is remarkable, and a substantial proportion of the countries engaged in international education are doing so on a relatively large scale. While not documented here, there is substantial growth in the market share of many of those host countries with smaller numbers of international students – an issue to be examined in the JTD series for 2012.
These data serve to show that while still a dominant force in international education, Australian higher education providers should be aware of the massive number of participating nations (and institutions) in this market and the potential influence of these competitors on global higher education in the future.
References
Bhandari, R. (2011). Student Mobility and the Internationalization of Higher Education - national policies and strategies from six world regions, A Project Altlas Report. USA: Institute of International Education.
Marginson, S. (2011). Global position and position- taking in higher education: The case of Australia.
In S. Marginson, S. Kaur & E. Sawir (Eds.), Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific, Strategic Responses to Globalization. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ziguras, C., & McBurnie, G. (2011). International student mobility in the Asia-Pacific: From globalization to regional integration? In
S. Marginson, S. Kaur & E. Sawir (Eds.), Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific, Strategic Responses to Globalization. Dordrecht: Springer.
Melbourne office
19 Prospect Hill Road (Private Bag 55) Camberwell VIC 3124
Telephone +61 3 9277 5555 Facsimile +61 3 9277 5500
