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Education at a Glance 2011 was released today by the OECD. The report is replete with data about education systems, patterns, trends, etc., and is well worth reading.
Free copies of the full report (497 pp) and the highlights version (98 pp) are available in PDF format via the links I provided in this sentence. An on-line summary is available here too, with links to country notes for Brazil (in English; in Portuguese, Chile, Estonia, France (in French), Germany (in English; in German), Greece, Italy (in English) (in Italian), Japan (in English, in Japanese), Korea, Mexico (in English; in Spanish), Spain (in English; in Spanish), and the United Kingdom.
While all of the sections are worth reading, I always find the data regarding international student mobility too hard to resist glancing at when the report first comes out. These six graphics, and associated highlights (all but the first extracted from the highlights version of Education at a Glance 2011) will give you a flavour of some of the noteworthy student mobility trends. Further details regarding mobility trends and patterns can be found in the full report (pp. 318-339).
How many students study abroad?
- In 2009, almost 3.7 million tertiary students were enrolled outside their country of citizenship, representing an increase of more than 6% on the previous year.
- Just over 77% of students worldwide who study abroad do so in OECD countries.
- In absolute terms, the largest numbers of international students are from China, India and Korea. Asians account for 52% of all students studying abroad worldwide.
Where do students go to study abroad?
- Six countries – Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States – hosted more than half of the world’s students who studied abroad in 2009.
- The United States saw a significant drop as a preferred destination of foreign students between 2000 and 2009, falling from about 23% of the global market share to 18%.
- The shares of foreign students who chose Australia and New Zealand as their destination grew by almost 2%, as did that in the Russian Federation, which has become an important new player on the international education market.
How many international students stay on in the host country?
- Several OECD countries have eased their immigration policies to encourage the temporary or permanent immigration of international students, including Australia, Canada, Finland, France, New Zealand and Norway.
- Many students move under a free-movement regime, such as the European Union, and do not need a residence permit to remain in their country of study.
- On average, 25% of international students who did not renew their student permits changed their student status in the host country mainly for work-related reasons.
Other complementary reports released over the last month include:
- Obst, D., Kuder, M., and Banks, C. (2011) Joint and Double Degree Programs in the Global Context: Report on an International Survey, IIE and the Freie Universität Berlin, September.
- Canadian Education Statistics Council (2011) Education Indicators in Canada: An International Perspective 2011, Statistics Canada and CMEC, September.
- Green, M., and Ferguson, A. (2011) Internationalization of US Higher Education in a Time of Declining Resources, Australian Education International, June.
The reworking of the global higher education landscape continues to generate a wide array of ripple effects at a range of scales (from the local through to the global). While not perfect, the OECD’s annual Education at a Glance 2011 does an excellent job providing much of the available data on these trends, and on a wide array of issues and phenomenon that help to shape these mobility outcomes. A comparative perspective, after all, helps to flag the place of individual countries’ in the broader and ever evolving landscape; a landscape that countries play a significant role in both constructing, and reacting to.
