Educational Equality and International Students: Justice Across Borders?

238 Pages·2018·2.111 MB·English

by  Stuart Tannock

STUART TANNOCK
EDUCATIONAL
EQUALITY AND
INTERNATIONAL
STUDENTS
JUSTICE ACROSS BORDERS?
Educational Equality and International Students
“This book makes a major contribution to research by raising new and pro-
foundly challenging questions about the conceptualisation of equality in educa-
tion arising from the internationalisation of higher education in market terms.
Written with exemplary clarity and precision, the book highlights the limita-
tions of framing both theoretical and empirical research about equality and
social justice within the boundaries of the nation state. It demonstrates how the
nation-state-based narrative has left international students outside the equality
radar of both policymakers and university management within the UK in
particular.
The author examines the contradictions between the rhetoric of universities
and their practices whereby they proclaim universalistic values of human rights
to education, while simultaneously regarding international students as ‘cash
cows’, a simple market commodity. He provides compelling evidence that
British universities ‘are now deciding to recruit and not recruit, and admit and
not admit international students not just on the basis of their academic merit,
but on their nationality, immigration history, and financial well-being and secu-
rity.’ This book should be read by all of those researching or teaching about
equality in education. It extends the parameters of our intellectual horizons
beyond the boundaries of the nation state and opens up new questions and
frameworks for analysing inequality in education in a globalised world.”
—Kathleen Lynch, Professor of Equality Studies, University College Dublin,
Ireland
“It is incredibly timely for this book to come out in our 50th anniversary year,
as it is a fascinating exploration of some really fundamental principles and con-
cepts surrounding international students, how they are treated and how they are
seen. Not everyone will agree with every aspect, but the book asks some really
powerful questions – many of which we will need to re-visit at the very least in
the context of Brexit – and many of which are in practice, for good reasons or
bad, often overlooked or ignored.”
—Dominic Scott, Chief Executive, UK Council for
International Student Affairs
“This is an incisive and original contribution to the literature on international
students, pointing up the neglected topic of which kinds of inequalities they
experience and how, given this, we should think of educational equalities. The
analysis richly advances our understanding of educational equalities across
nations, institutions, and communities of practice. The book combines a very
clear discussion of theory with richly documented accounts of experience in the
UK. All discussions of higher education as a public good need to engage with
some of the complexities this study raises.”
—Elaine Unterhalter, Professor of Education and International Development,
UCL Institute of Education, UK
Stuart Tannock
Educational Equality
and International
Students
Justice Across Borders?
Stuart Tannock
UCL Institute of Education
London, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-76380-4 ISBN 978-3-319-76381-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76381-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936886
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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Acknowledgements
The research study on which this book is based was funded by the Society
for Research into Higher Education (SRHE Research Award reference
1552). I would like to thank the students and staff from universities and
other higher education institutions around the UK, who generously
shared their time, experience and insights on the question of educational
equality and international students with me: I hope that this book does
justice to their invaluable contributions. I would also like to thank Rachel
Brooks at the University of Surrey and Richard Watermeyer at the
University of Bath, who supported this project at the very beginning; the
staff team at UKCISA – the UK Council for International Student
Affairs – who were incredibly supportive and helpful throughout the
research phase of this project; and Mayssoun Sukarieh, who, more than
anyone, has helped to sharpen and clarify my thinking about issues of
equality and justice in a global context.
v
Contents
1 Introduction: A Case of Ambivalence, Uncertainty
and Contradiction 1
2 E ducational Equality, Higher Education and the Nation
State 15
3 I nternational Students in the UK: Caught Between Market
Forces and Immigration Targets 39
4 T he Fragmentation of Equality in the Internationalized
University 69
5 Equality Remains: Stubborn Attachments to Ideals
of Educational Justice 93
6 T he Question of International Tuition Fees: Cash Cows
and Silent Elephants 125
vii
viii Contents
7 The Swiss Banker Problem: International Students,
Internationalization and the University Curriculum 153
8 Constructing the International-Home Student Attainment
Gap 185
9 Conclusion: Taking Educational Equality Across
National Borders 215
Index 227
1
Introduction: A Case of Ambivalence,
Uncertainty and Contradiction
In an increasingly globalised world of education, should the principle
of educational equality apply to all students – or only to some? If the
principle of educational equality applies to all students everywhere,
how exactly can this be made to work, given that most educational
institutions and systems remain nationally and locally rooted, organ-
ised and funded? Or, if educational equality applies only to some –
namely, students with citizenship or residency rights within a given
country – what are the consequences for educational institutions, indi-
viduals, families, local communities and global society in general, as
ever growing numbers of students, scholars, schools, colleges and uni-
versities now work across nation state borders in their pursuit and prac-
tice of knowledge, learning and education?
These core questions form the central concern of this book. To
address these questions, the book draws on an empirical study of one
specific real world case, that is international students studying at uni-
versities in the United Kingdom. The empirical study investigated a
more focused set of parallel questions: How are universities in the UK
conceptualising and promoting principles of educational equality for
their international as well as their home students? How do university
© The Author(s) 2018 1
S. Tannock, Educational Equality and International Students,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76381-1_1
2 S. Tannock
staff, administrators and student leaders explain the rationale for
extending, limiting or t ransforming principles of educational equality,
according to whether an individual is considered to be a home, European
or international student? How are the claims and arguments these staff
and student leaders make supported or undermined by actual govern-
ment and university policy and practice?
International students constitute an important if often overlooked
group for considering questions of global or international educational
equality and justice in today’s world. For one thing, they comprise a sig-
nificant and growing proportion of higher education students worldwide.
In 2015, international students made up 5.6% of all higher education
students in OECD countries, 11.5% of all Master’s degree level students
and 25.7% of all doctoral students; globally, the number of international
higher education students increased by 160% between 1995 and 2011
(OECD 2017). The United Kingdom has some of the highest propor-
tions and numbers of international students anywhere. In the 2015–2016
academic year, there were 438,000 international students studying in
universities in the UK: together, these students comprised 23% of all full
time higher education students in the country, 70% of full time taught
postgraduate students and 51% of full time research degree students
(HESA 2017). Given such figures, the question of how and whether
principles of educational equality should apply to international students
has significance not just for these students themselves, but for educa-
tional institutions more generally, as well as both host countries and
sending countries from which international students come.
A second reason why international students are an important group
for considering questions of global or international educational equality
and justice is that they are often a vulnerable group of students, since
most of them are studying and living temporarily in countries in which
they do not have citizenship or permanent residency rights, protections
or entitlements – and in which the rights, protections and principles of
educational equality and justice that they might enjoy in their home
countries do not apply (Marginson 2013). In the UK in recent years,
international students have sometimes found themselves stuck between
the global market forces that lead UK higher education institutions (and