Foreign-Student Boom Both Helps and Hurts British Universities, Report Says

[Harold Schiffman]

September 13, 2007 Foreign-Student Boom Both Helps and Hurts British
Universities, Report Says

A report <http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/mediareleases/show.asp?MR=506>published
today by the umbrella organization representing the chief
executives of all British universities highlights the growing importance of
international students to both their financial heath and the survival of
certain subjects that the government has deemed to have "strategic
importance." <http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/04/2005041103n.htm>

The report, "Patterns of Higher Education Institutions in the UK," is the
seventh in an annual series issued by Universities U.K. to examine trends in
British higher education. "The data show fluctuations in enrollments in the
selected strategic subjects rather than clear trends over the period," the
report says. "For example, biological sciences and some aspects of
engineering and technology experienced a downturn between 1996-97 and 2001-2
but have picked up more recently."

The level of foreign enrollment in strategic subjects such as biological
sciences, engineering, and technology is much higher than in other
disciplines, the report says, with 21 percent of undergraduates and 71
percent of graduate students coming from outside Britain.

In an interview with *The
Guardian,*<http://education.guardian.co.uk/universitiesincrisis/story/0,,2168516,00.html>Geoffrey
Crossick, chairman of the Universities
U.K. group that produced the report, acknowledged that the large number of
foreign students, particularly at the graduate level, is "worrying because
it raises the question of whether we can renew our academic and research
base from within the U.K." *—Aisha Labi*
http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=3018
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Harold F. Schiffman


Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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