2004 The Admission of International Students into Higher Education

177 Pages·2004·0.62 MB·English

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Franziska Muche, Maria Kelo, Bernd Wächter
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Students into Higher Education
Policies and Instruments
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Universities and other higher education institutions e
operate in an increasingly international environment. d
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Many of them run international marketing campaigns t
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and recruit students on a global scale. Even those

which do not engage in such activities are sometimes l
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flooded with student applications from all over the n
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world. Therefore, policies and instruments for the i
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admission of international students are rapidly gaining a
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in importance. In this situation, institutions are looking r
for admission models which will both help them get the e
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“right” students and rationalise their administrative n
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procedures. But there is hardly any literature to guide f
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them in this endeavour. The present study tries to
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change this. It examines admissions policies and tools o
in different countries, in order to identify a range of si
models and procedures for the effective and efficient s
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handling of international student admissions and m
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selection.
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ACA Papers on
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ISBN 3-932306-62-7 Th International Cooperation in Education Lemmens
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Franziska Muche, Maria Kelo, Bernd Wächter
THE ADMISSION OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
INTO HIGHER EDUCATION
Policies and Instruments
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ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Education
Franziska Muche,Maria Kelo,Bernd Wächter
THE ADMISSION OF INTERNATIONAL
STUDENTS INTO HIGHER EDUCATION
Policies and Instruments
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Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
The Admission of International Students into Higher Education – Policies and
Instruments/Franziska Muche, Maria Kelo, Bernd Wächter – Bonn:Lemmens
Verlags- & Mediengesellschaft, 2004
(ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Education)
ISBN 3-932306-62-7
NE:ACA Papers
© Copyright 2004 Lemmens Verlags- & Mediengesellschaft mbH, Bonn
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Anschrift des Verlages
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Telefax: + 49 228 42 13 729
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Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1 Executive summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.1 Background and aims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2 Definitions and clarifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3 Country overviews:a bird’s-eye view of admissions. . . . . . 29
3.1 Switzerland:attempts to streamline diversity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2 France:embassies manage non-EU undergraduate applications 32
3.3 United States:institutional autonomy and global competition. . 35
3.4 Australia:separate admissions for international candidates . . . 37
3.5 The Netherlands:focus on the Master’s level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.6 Sweden:English language Master’s and free tuition. . . . . . . . . 43
3.7 United Kingdom:a central admissions service for
undergraduates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4 The rationale of international student admissions . . . . . . . 49
4.1 The general driving force behind foreign student recruitment. . 49
4.2 The rationale of the admissions and selection process. . . . . . . 55
4.3 Different rationales and foreign student admissions:a causal
relationship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5 Information and enquiry management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.1 Managing large volumes of enquiries:special measures . . . . . 65
5.2 Internal strategies for enquiry management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.3 National and discipline-specific structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6 The organisational structure of the admissions process . . 73
6.1 The institutional level. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.1.1 Centralised and decentralised systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.1.2 A typology of units handling admissions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
6.1.3 The division of work within units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.2 Economies of scale:networks and national-level cooperation . 93
6.2.1 Networks for foreign student recruitment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.2.2 The national level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
7 Assessment and selection procedures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
7.1 Assessment and decision-making systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
7.2 Academic involvement in the admissions process . . . . . . . . . . 111
7.3 The basis of assessment:admissions criteria and instruments 119
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7.3.1 Common entry requirements and their relative importance . . . 120
7.3.2 The eligibility check:common tools to assess foreign
qualifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7.3.3 Language requirements and testing systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
7.3.4 Additional tools:interviews, tests, and entrance examinations . 138
8 The timing:closing dates or rolling admissions . . . . . . . . . 147
8.1 The use of deadlines in admissions procedures. . . . . . . . . . . . 148
8.2 Continuous decisions:rolling admissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
8.3 Admission timing at national level. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
9 Managing the volume of applications:
additional tools and filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
10 Twelve conclusions and recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Annexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
With the growing demand for higher education in some world regions and
increased marketing activities by destination countries, the volume of appli-
cations from international students has been steadily increasing over the
past decade (in the main destination countries).In some countries and insti-
tutions, it has reached a critical dimension: institutions receiving ten thou-
sand enquiries per year are no exception.Many international offices original-
ly designed to manage exchange programmes or administrative structures
designed for national admissions are overburdened with this situation. Also,
the applicants’countries of origin are ever more diverse, making it more diffi-
cult to assess and compare their entry qualifications.All of these issues have
made international admissions a major concern amongst many higher edu-
cation institutions.
While much has been written and said about other internationalisation issu-
es, little research has been devoted to how international admissions are
handled in different countries and institutions.The present volume aims to fill
this gap. The study on the admission of international students into higher
education was conducted by the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA),
a not-for-profit European organisation dedicated, amongst other issues, to
the analysis of new trends in internationalisation. The work could not have
been undertaken without a generous grant from the Stifterverband für die
Deutsche Wissenschaft.
Many have contributed to this study.ACA is a member organisation of natio-
nal-level bodies responsible for the promotion and funding of international
exchange and cooperation in education and training. The present study
would not have been possible without the support and information provided
by contact persons at the ACA member organisations, such as the British
Council, the Rectors’Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS), the Ger-
man Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), EduFrance, the Netherlands
Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education (Nuffic), the
Swedish Institute (SI), the International Programme Office (IPK) and the
Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (HSV), as well as ACA’s non-
European members IDP Education Australia and the Institute of International
Education (IIE) in the US. It would go too far to mention all the names of
those who patiently answered emails, made themselves available for tele-
phone interviews, and provided most valuable information especially in the
first phase of the project.ACA is deeply indebted to all of them.We are also
grateful to the group of experts who advised the authors in the course of the
study: Annette Julius (DAAD), Hanneke Teekens (Nuffic), Jochen Hellmann
(University of Hamburg), Barrie Morgan (British Council), Carine Rüssmann
(University of Lausanne), Ekkehard Winter and Volker Meyer-Guckel (both
Stifterverband). Most importantly, this volume would not have seen the light
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The Admission of International Students into Higher Education
of day without the support from individual higher education institutions. We
would like to express our special thanks to all the administrators and acade-
mics who helped organise the institutional site visits and made themselves
available for interviews.Likewise, we would like to thank the higher education
authorities, internationalisation agencies and associations visited in the
course of the study.Finally, the study could not have been prepared without
the strong support from those who worked behind the scenes: the em-
ployees of the ACA Secretariat, especially Maaike Dhondt and Anna Quici,
and Adam Higazi (University of Oxford) who edited the final text. We hope
that all those who have contributed to the study find an adequate reward in
the present volume.
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Executive summary
1 Executive summary
The present study was prepared between August 2003 and September 2004
by the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA).Its main author, Franziska
Muche, was supported by Maria Kelo and advised by ACA director Bernd
Wächter. The study was financed by a generous grant from the Stifterver-
band für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, a German think-tank specialising in
higher education.
Introduction (chapter 2)
The study is devoted to policies and instruments used in the admission of
international degree students in Australia, France, the Netherlands, Sweden,
Switzerland, and the United States, as well as to specific aspects of foreign
student admissions in the United Kingdom. The internationalisation debate
has so far been predominantly focused on mobility, structural reforms, attrac-
tiveness, and marketing.The importance of adequate admissions and selec-
tion procedures for the new international clientele has been widely neg-
lected. Individual higher education institutions and national bodies are now
starting to revise their procedures and are investigating good-practice
models used in their respective countries and abroad.Yet, research into how
international student admissions are handled in different countries has so far
been scarce.
The aim of this study is to examine policies and instruments in the selected
countries, and identify effective and transferable admissions models – that is,
examples of good practice within different institutional and national contexts.
The study aims to identify a range of models and procedures that can be
used to efficiently organise foreign student admissions and selection. Two
clarifications are necessary: first, in reality there are no “text-book” admis-
sions systems. The models identified in this paper therefore refer to indivi-
dual aspects of an admissions system rather than to a generic procedure
that would be applicable in all institutions.Second, this is not a comparative
study. There are few, if any, homogeneous “national” admissions systems,
but a wide variety of institutions which operate within a given national con-
text.Within the scope of the present study, it would have been unrealistic to
attempt a representative sample for any one country, and it would be mis-
taken to generalise about “typical”national procedures or their quality on the
basis of the examples used.
A number of clarifications are used to delimit the scope of the study:
(cid:1) Admissions: two aspects of admissions are referred to in the present
study. First, admissions are understood in operational terms as the
management of enquiries, the management of applications and the selec-
tion process. Admissions are distinct from student support, which refers
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