Development & Aid, Education, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights, Migration & Refugees

EDUCATION: Students in a Strange Land

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2006 (IPS) - They grow up in the world’s most impoverished region with many hardships in life to cope with, yet they are outnumbering their counterparts from the rest of the world who seek higher education abroad.

Students from sub-Saharan Africa are the most mobile in the world, according to a new study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), with one out of 16 studying in universities overseas.

By contrast, only one out of every 250 students in North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) goes overseas for higher studies, which the UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics considers “the least mobile group”.

Published in the Institute’s Global Education Digest 2006, the 194-page report covers the latest trends in primary to university-level schooling in more than 200 countries, and tracks the flow of “mobile students”, who are defined as those studying in foreign countries where they are not permanent residents.

Between 1999 and 2004, the number of mobile students worldwide increased from 1.75 million to 2.5 million, a surge that UNESCO researchers see as a reflection of “rapid and overall expansion of higher education”.

“What this report shows is that the real dynamic in tertiary education is coming from African, Arab and Chinese students,” says the Institute’s director, Hendrick van der Pol. “They are the driving force behind the internationalisation of higher education..”

With China sending about 14 percent of its students to the United States, Japan and Britain, researchers say the global distribution of higher education has “dramatically changed”.

In 1999, there were as many students from East Africa studying abroad as those from Western Europe, but within four years, they outnumbered the Europeans by a third.

In relative terms though, students from sub-Saharan Africa are still the most mobile in the world, according to the study, which found several countries in the region having less students at home than those studying abroad.

Researchers say most of the students from sub-Saharan region have no choice but to go abroad because either they have limited access to domestic universities or they find the quality of instruction substandard.

The top destinations for sub-Saharan students include France (21 percent), Britain (12 percent), Germany (six percent) and Portugal (five percent).

The study shows that in most cases, such students are rarely counted in national statistics. For example, in Cape Verde, just six percent of the university-age population is reportedly enrolled in institutes of higher education, a figure that would double if students abroad were taken into account. Similarly, in Mauritius, enrollment ratio would rise from 17 percent to 24 percent and six to 11 percent in Botswana if students studying abroad were included in education censuses.

In a bid to develop a global perspective, UNESCO researchers at the institute say they are using new indicators to assess the flow of students in and out of more than 100 countries.

According to their findings, about 23 percent of the world’s mobile students go to the United States and about 12 percent study at various universities in Britain. About 11 percent enroll in Germany, 10 percent in France, about seven percent in Australia and five percent in Japan.

In evaluating the capacity of universities in host countries to cope with further enrollment, the report shows that currently in Australia and Britain, mobile students account for at least 17 percent and 13 percent of total higher education enrollment, respectively. In the United States and Canada, however, their numbers have fallen to three percent.

The study does not explain the reason for the drop in the enrollment rate for foreign students in the United States, but a number of published reports point out that strict visa policies and security measures adopted by the U.S. authorities in the aftermath of the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks have discouraged foreign students from applying at U.S. universities.

In the 2002 school year, for example, nearly 600,000 international students attended U.S. universities. In 2003-04, their numbers decreased by 14,000. And in 2004-2005, as the official records show, only about 560,000 foreign students were able to get into U.S. universities.

Meanwhile, according to the study, in the past five years, Arab countries have seen a steady rise in student mobility and now account for seven percent of the global total of foreign student enrollment. In Djibouti, for example, there are three students abroad for every two at home.

The study shows similar trends taking place in Mauritania, Morocco and Qatar, which have high ratios of students abroad, with 22 percent, 15 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

For their part, Western European countries, mainly France, Germany, Italy and Greece, send more than 400,000 students abroad or 17 percent of the global total. There are also many more students abroad than at home in Cyprus, Andorra and Luxembourg.

Students in South and West Asia account for about eight percent of the global total, with two-thirds of them coming from India, according to the report, which points out that half of them seek higher education in North America, mainly in the United States, while 25 percent go to Britain and Australia.