Follow the Twitter Backchannel from Going Global 2018 from May 2-4 in Kuala Lumpur #GoingGlobal2018

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Follow the Twitter Backchannel from Going Global 2017 - 22-24 May 2017 in London #GoingGlobal2017

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Watch the Live Stream and Follow the #GoingGlobal2015 Twitter Backchannel from Going Global 2015

Going Global 2015 is currently taking place today and tomorrow June 1-2, 2015) at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster, London.  You can access the programme, list of speakers as well as watch the live feed via the Going Global 2015 website.


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New Study from the British Council's Education Intelligence Service Examines Global Agent use in International Higher Education

“Student Insight: Why Students Use Agents” focuses on how students around the world view education agents when pursuing overseas study, and how expectations for services vary from region to region


Why do international students use education agents when making the decision to study overseas? What are the services they seek and what are the informational needs that are currently going unmet? The boom in international higher education has prompted increased demand for education agents, and the nature of that demand is studied in a report by Education Intelligence, the British Council’s global service.


Student Insight: Why Students Use Agents – Demand and Supply examines the global use of education agents through the perspective of prospective students who seek professional advice and guidance when considering overseas study. Without a doubt, the role of agents is controversial -- some in the international education sector view agents as neutral advisors while others see them as profit-seeking middlemen. However, despite the pros and cons, there is value in simply understanding the geographic nuances behind what is being mistakenly viewed as a monolithic trend.


“No matter the controversy, the fact that education agents have become a global industry is undeniable,” says Elizabeth Shepherd, Research Manager at Education Intelligence and author of the report. “We must step away from the debate and understand how differently prospective students and their parents view agents, depending on where in the world they live.”


Some highlights from Student Insight: Why Students Use Agents:


· Due to a lack of reliable internet access, African students may pursue an agent’s services simply to get information
· In South Asia, the service most sought after from agents is information on obtaining a visa
· Europe shows the lowest percentage of respondents who might use agents, likely due to relative standardization of education environment
· In China, foundation course and English language students are more likely to use agents
· Indian students who have previously studied overseas are less likely to use an education agent
· Students interviewed in Beijing viewed agents as responsible and quick to react
· In Guangzhou, students interviewed said agents did not provide adequate information on the visa application process


STUDENT INSIGHT is a series of research reports produced by Education Intelligence which provides an unprecedented look into the process of a student’s decision-making based on data collected from 130,000 prospective student survey responses around the world over the past four years.


Student Insight: Agents, as well country-specific reports, are available for purchase via the Education Intelligence website at: http://ihe.britishcouncil.org/.

No doubt about it…studying abroad is fun!

I came across an interesting article today in The Independent entitled “Broaden your horizons with international study” with a sub-title of “Venturing overseas to get a degree makes you attractive to employers – and it’s fun”. Before reading the article I decided that this article would serve as the basis of today’s IHEC Blog post.

The article discusses the mobility of UK students and provides some very interesting data points recently released by the British Council. I won’t summarize the data or other themes of the article for you here as you should read it for yourself as I think it is a very good article.

What surprised me was that the “and it's fun!” part of the sub-title was never mentioned in the article at all. I was fully expecting to read that one should go and study abroad because it is a fun thing to do and you can put the experience on your resume and market it as an advantage over other applicants who have not studied abroad. Why then did the author feel the need to include this in the sub-title of the article?

This leads me to the real point of this post…I was an exchange student in Rosenheim, Germany during the summers between my sophomore (2nd) and junior (3rd) years of high school and again during my senior (4th) year of high school and my freshman (1st) year of college. I then studied abroad in Valladolid, Spain during the spring semester my junior year in college followed by a month of backpacking around Europe. Did I have fun during my two high school exchange experiences and while I studied abroad…Oh Yes I Certainly Did (details are only known by the participants in the programs!). Did I take my academics seriously while I studied abroad in Spain (Rosenheim was more of a cultural exchange than an academic exchange)? I took my academics as seriously in Spain as I took them while back at my home institution!! I also know that many of my colleagues in the field of international education had fun while studying abroad but it is important to recognize that everyone defines “fun” differently. Have I witnessed international students here in the United States have fun? The answer to that question is…Yes!

I fully support and believe in rigorous education abroad programs (broadly defined) but I also believe that participation in these programs is indeed a fun experience. So how do we as a field go about educating senior administrators, faculty, colleagues, parents and others that the education abroad programs we develop are rich in academic content and value and that it is absolutely okay to have fun while participating? We are not creating longer and glorified spring break trips (at least a significant majority in the field aren’t) and, for the record, I don’t consider my exchange experiences in Rosenheim and my academic experience in Valladolid to be long glorified spring break trips! I must admit, however, that it was an interesting experience to be on a flight from Chicago to Germany when I was 15 and to be able to order a bier with no questions asked (that was in 1986 and it was free back then so I may have had a couple).

What do you think? Did you have fun on an education abroad program?

Photo Credit: Ethan Prater

Forecasting International Student Mobility by the British Council

The British Council has partnered with the Economist Intelligence Unit on a new project designed to predict international student demand for education. According to the British Council the project “revisits Vision 2020 (a British Council report from 2004 forecasting the global demand for international student places in English speaking destination countries) and builds on its strengths. However, the methodology used differs and so do the outputs. The model has been piloted in China and will be rolled out across the UK priority sending countries over the coming year. All macroeconomic market data used in the predictions will be updated frequently. The forecasting tool has statistical robustness which means that all of the findings can be measured against a degree of statistical confidence.” You can access more information here: www.britishcouncil.org/eumd-information-forecasting-student-mobility.htm