We just talk about the good stuff

Australia’s Deakin University is furthering its offer to students in India with an expansion of its partnership with Symbiosis International.

The Australian university, which is set to begin teaching at a branch campus in GIFT City in Gujarat, has worked with Symbiosis for over 20 years. Under the new partnership, Deakin will offer a dual degree and an accelerated master’s program with Symbiosis in the areas of business administration & analytics and liberal arts.

President and vice-chancellor of Deakin University, Iain Martin, recently travelled to India to confirm the plan alongside SIU chancellor and founder and president of Symbiosis Society, S B Majumdar.

“Deakin and Symbiosis have always upheld their commitment to foster global learning and growth outcomes, as well as excellence in research that drives positive impact for international communities,” Martin said at a ceremony in Pune.

“Taking our partnership of over two decades forward, we shall continue to achieve our goals of education beyond borders and mutually beneficial collaborations, which form the cornerstone of bilateral linkages between Australia and India.”

The partnership with Deakin has offered Symbiosis students opportunities in global learning, skilling and research, Majumdar continued.

“Much has already been achieved and with the current extension of our partnership we look forward to brighter prospects of student/faculty mobility, knowledge engagement and exchange and enhanced multicultural understanding and global citizenship,” he said.

Under the new agreement, students at the Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies in Bengaluru will be able to articulate into Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.

The 2+2 program will allow students to benefit from “Deakin’s global linkages and world-class research and Symbiosis’s vibrant learning ecosystem”, the partners added.

The accelerated master’s program will allow Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts students to progress into the Deakin University program after seven semesters at the school in India.

The five-year program offers students the opportunity to earn both a four-years bachelor’s degree from Symbiosis International (Deemed University) and a master’s from Deakin.

In two decades, the partners have built a strategic alliance, featuring a Deakin HUB at Symbiosis International (Deemed University) which was launched in 2022.

Deakin also revealed hubs at OP Jindal Global University and Chitkara University that same year.

“The new offerings will extend brilliant opportunities for ambitious Indian students”

The university’s South Asia operations commenced in 1994 in New Delhi, India, which it says makes it one of the first overseas education provider to set operations in the region.

Deakin and Symbiosis have also collaborated on internationalisation of curriculum, women’s entrepreneurship research alliance and mobility.

“The new offerings will extend brilliant opportunities for ambitious Indian students to access international academic resources and to global career outcomes,” the partners added.

“The ease of mobility and accessibility is being facilitated by the two institutions in alignment with their commitment towards providing quality education, skilling and research pathways to help shape successful future outcomes for Indian students.”

The post Deakin expands in India with Symbiosis Int’l appeared first on The PIE News.

Speaking at British Educational Travel Association’s parliamentary reception recently, the tourism and heritage spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats Baroness Doocey emphasised that now is the time for the sector to lobby the UK’s political parties.

“This is a really important time for us to lobby, to persuade and to cajole because basically [all the political parties] looking for ideas,” she told those gathered.

The current UK parliament comes to its end on December 17, 2024, meaning the latest the next general election can be is January 2025.

There is much speculation as to when exactly it will take place but one thing is for sure, UK political parties are preparing to put together the manifestos and plans should they be the ones in government following the next vote.

The PIE asked key stakeholders what commitments they want from government.

Following the UK’s confirmation that it will be associating to the EU’s Horizon program, UUKi director Jamie Arrowsmith highlighted three priorities.

“First, the UK’s international reputation and success is based on our domestic capacity and performance.

“We need an end to the damaging narrative that has so often surrounded universities and to address the very real funding challenges in both teaching and research. That has to be the number one priority, it creates the foundation for everything else,” he said.

Language and messaging were also points picked up by UKCISA chief executive, Anne-Marie Graham.

“We’d like to see manifestos support messaging that promotes the UK as a welcoming and safe country to study in,” she said.

“We’d like to see manifestos support messaging that promotes the UK as a welcoming and safe country”

“This means avoiding any negative language when referring to student migration, international students and their dependants, and avoiding exclusionary language such as the ‘best and brightest’ which dismisses student potential and the need for workers at all levels to address the widening skills gap,” Graham noted.

Secondly, Arrowsmith called for “stability in the policy environment for international students”.

The Graduate route must be maintained and a commitment to “sustainable international student recruitment”, he said.

The post-study work opportunity was also mentioned by the Boarding Schools’ Association.

In a statement to The PIE, BSA said it would like to see “an even clearer, more accessible, and affordable sponsor and student visa process for international students studying at boarding schools across the UK”.

Ensuring successful access for international boarders to continue to UK universities in the long term should also be prioritised in the next election, it continued.

To remain competitive, the UK government must halt statements which “threaten the ‘post-study work’ Graduate visa route for graduates and the sector overall”, it said.

For the English language sector, the country’s national association called for three priorities.

One is work rights for ELT students studying under the student visa route, the second allowing EU junior groups to come to the UK using ID cards rather than passports, in addition to youth ability deals both with EU countries and globally, Huan Japes from English UK said.

Other policy changes English UK set out in its position paper earlier this year include the right for students to apply for follow-on visas without leaving the country.

“I would add that we expect an announcement this autumn on ID cards and the list of travellers scheme for French students but would like progress in other countries too,” Japes added.

Arrowsmith also said that future governments should look at the way international students are presented in net migration statistics.

In 2012, the then universities minister, David Willetts, wrote to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, that keeping students in the net migration figures could “result in a reduction in the number of legitimate students”. It a point raised repeatedly in years since.

Six years later, a predecessor of Clegg’s as leader of the Liberal Democrats Vince Cable told The PIE that the home office’s “insistence of including overseas students amongst immigrants” was “one of the most stupid, self-damaging policies in recent years”. It was a “lose-lose-lose-lose policies”, he said at the time.

“That’s been driving bad policy for a decade,” Arrowsmith added.

The UUKi director also said that the UK’s International Education Strategy, while being “incredibly helpful and has led to growth”, may need reevaluating.

“It’s time to rethink what the IES looks like, and our offer to the world. The message to potential partners should be: whatever your aspirations – as a student, a researcher, or an institution or business overseas – the UK is the best possible place to help you fulfil that ambition,” he said.

“We’d like to see manifestos commit to celebrate UK higher education and the diversity and choice across different fields of study, not using negative language about low-quality courses and crackdowns,” Graham at UKCISA concluded.

The post What UK international educators want to see in manifestos in the next election appeared first on The PIE News.

A severe backlog of people trained in dentistry outside the UK waiting to take the national registration exam is having a knock-on effect on dental practices across the UK.

The Overseas Registration Exam must be passed by those who have an international degree in dentistry if they wish to practice in the UK or take a postgraduate course in the profession involving clinical work on patients.

But the wait for the ORE, which in some instances has been up to three years, is “deeply concerning”, according to Claire O’Leary, director of external relations and partnerships at the College of Medicine and Dentistry.

The situation for international dentists has recently grown worse, she said, due to a combination of reasons including a registration exam backlog caused by covid and the closure in spring 2023 of a registration-by-application route for internationally qualified dentists. 

“This latter option afforded internationally qualified dentists the opportunity to register and practice, within the scope of a dental hygienist/therapist, whilst they waited to sit and pass their ORE or LDS [Licence in Dental Surgery – a longer test] dentist registration exams,” O’Leary told The PIE.

The decision to close this has “exacerbated things for international dentists who want to practice” in the UK. 

“We badly need [more dentists],” she noted. 

In terms of interim career opportunities, the College now provides additional training in Dental Nursing, which aims to ensure students “retain the opportunity to work in a UK clinical setting until they have cleared their registration exams”.

“As the regulator of dental professionals, the GDC’s primary purpose is to maintain patient safety and public confidence in the dental professions, ” a spokesperson for the General Dental Council told The PIE. 

“In May we announced the tripling of part one places for the Overseas Registration Exam… we launched a consultation on international registration and announced an increase in part two ORE places and a significant increase in staffing. 

“In terms of ORE numbers, we had a 600-candidate sitting of part one in August, which should have reduced the numbers significantly. We also opened bookings for the part two in November this week,” the spokesperson explained. 

Despite the closure of the dental therapist registration-by-application route and the continuation of backlog clearing for the ORE, the College’s one-year master’s in Advanced General Dental Practice remains “very popular with international dentists who are focused on securing registration and entering UK practice and want end-to-end support”, O’Leary explained.

In a small victory, the issue isn’t affecting EU students. In June, the decision was taken to recognise EU degrees for another five years – but that doesn’t completely erase the original problem.

“Part of the solution could be having more international relations”

“Legislation was changed to empower the GDC to be able to legally recognise international degrees for EU qualifications, but there is also politics involving a possible brain drain, which would have to be navigated sensitively and appropriately.

“Part of the solution could be having more international relations and more partnerships with overseas universities,” O’Leary said.

A consultation was launched in July by the GDC to discuss how to effectively recognise international dentistry degrees, but no legislative changes can be made until the current rules time out in March 2024, the spokesperson confirmed. 

The backlog has indirectly been felt in dentistry offices across the country, with a shortage of NHS dentist places on offer.

During the pandemic, the leading cause of hospital visits among children wasn’t Covid but tooth decay, largely because patients were unable to get places at an NHS dentist.

“I think we are seeing the UK sector and dental schools increasing their places and that’s really positive – but I think that alone is just not going to fill the gaps that meet patient demand,” O’Leary predicted. 

The post Foreign dentist qualifications backlog “concerning” appeared first on The PIE News.

US president Joe Biden and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi have welcomed a new agreement between universities in their respective countries to work together to jointly tackle global issues.

The Indo-US Global Challenges Institute will be established by the Council of Indian Institutes of Technology and the Association of American Universities under a new partnership that will see US$10 million initially invested in total by both countries.   

The virtual institute will aim to advance research in areas including sustainable energy, pandemic preparedness, semiconductor technology and quantum science. 

It will bring together research and higher education institutions from across the two countries, including some outside IIT and AAU members. 

“This is about helping all research institutions that want to engage with India”

“It’s really helping to coordinate mechanisms to encourage dialogue between faculty members and researchers at Indian universities and US universities,” said Toby Smith, vice president for policy at AAU.

“This is about helping all research institutions that want to engage with India do so,” he added.

“If they don’t even know where to start, they can plug in to the work of this institute”.

Smith said the initiative would help facilitate a “two way exchange of talent”, with US students and researchers working in India, as well as the other way round.  

There were almost 300,000 Indian students in the US in 2022, according to data from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

The organisations signed a memorandum of understanding, which was announced by Biden and Modi during the G20 summit in India in September.

The leaders also welcomed new educational partnerships between the countries, such as one between New York University-Tandon and IIT Kanpur Advanced Research Center.

They pledged to sustain the “high level of engagement” between the US and Indian governments, industries and academic institutions. 

The creation of the institute was one of the recommendations from the AAU task force on expanding US-India University Partnerships. 

AAU president Barbara R. Snyder said the institute will benefit “both the US and India equally and… will help lead us to solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the two nations”.   

In a joint statement, Biden and Modi reaffirmed their commitment to developing a relationship “that advances the aspirations of our people for a bright and prosperous future, serves the global good, and contributes to a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific”. 

At the G20 summit, leaders from the world’s biggest economies produced a consensus document that emphasised the importance of high-quality education and skills training and promised to encourage mobility of students, scholars and scientists across research and higher education institutions.

They emphasised the importance of expanding access to technical and vocational education and training as well as supporting institutions to “keep pace” with technological advances such as AI. 

The post Biden and Modi celebrate research partnerships appeared first on The PIE News.

Stakeholders in the UK’s language travel and English language teaching sectors have said inflation is having a knock-on effect on how they price their products. 

For those running tours, which normally need to include accommodation, airport transfer, transport and food, having to take into account what prices might be in the next year is causing possible profit margins to shrink. 

“As a general industry, we’re being asked for our prices in August-September and pricing [for the future] is difficult,” Mark Cook, managing director at Trinity International Education, which provides summer schools in the UK for Italian juniors, told The PIE. 

“In terms of food, inflation is running at 10% to 11%, and it’s partly our biggest cost.

“You may or may not be able to get the price of rent now from providers but if you go to a coach company and ask how much it is for a student trip to Oxford from London, they’ll say they don’t know. 

“The same goes with attractions. The London Eye might well say they don’t know how much it’ll cost next year,” Cook said. 

Yeliz Hussein, global sales director at Bayswater Education, said that some ELT providers are inflating prices by 15% or even 20% to try and cover their overheads. 

“It’s definitely something that needs to be discussed more,” Hussein told The PIE. 

Cook added, “We have to make estimates, and that can be dangerous when you’re talking about big numbers. If you make a mistake or swing the big number the wrong way, then someone’s going to be in trouble.” 

Despite the difficulties with inflation, the ELT sector is the UK in generally on its way to recovery. The latest English UK data shows 36% of all ELT students globally are choosing the UK, and 19% of all student weeks are spent in the country as well.

“Things are definitely looking more positive, and lighter,” Hussein noted.

Dynamic pricing has often been discussed in the last year throughout the sector. It was a hot topic at last year’s ALTO London conference. 

Hussein said that the system that’s worked before just isn’t going to work in this post-pandemic era.

“I don’t think our sector is quite ready for dynamic pricing. I definitely think we should have the ability to be able to change some of our pricing more frequently.

“Back in the day pre-pandemic, it was very common that you would set your pricing and then launch it. 

“Let’s say you can hold these prices for a year – I personally don’t think the world is like that anymore. We have to adapt and so do agents. 

“However, I think adapting so much so that you can change your pricing like Booking.com or hotels.com, is too extreme for what we are ready for. But I definitely think we have to be a little bit more dynamic with all our commission pricing,” she said. 

On further change in the sector, the recent acquisition of Tamwood by ILAC and the merger of ILSC and ELS have also been in discussion. 

Consolidation in the market is “a result of where we’re at in our industry”, Hussein added.

“We’re not going to be the only industry out there doing that,” she noted. 

“Whether or not it’s good for the industry is something else because we’re still not quite past that post-pandemic and companies are probably struggling financially.” 

The post Inflation uncertainty for UK language travel appeared first on The PIE News.

Three in ten international students stay in the Netherlands to work after graduating, data from the Central Bureau of Statistics shows.

Some 32% of international students who graduated in the 2018/2019 academic year were in employment in the Netherlands one year later, the data showed. Previously, only around 20% of international students done so.

Lucette Roovers, director of global engagement at Breda University of Applied Sciences, told The PIE the “stay rate” of international students has been a focal point of the ongoing international student debate in the Netherlands.

“Research has shown that, especially in the first years after graduation, they have a high added value for the Dutch economy,” she said.

“In 2019, the Central Planning Bureau calculated that a European student earns the Dutch treasury an average of almost €17,000 and a non-EEA student as much as over €96,000.”

Many benefits only come into play if an international student continues to live and work in the Netherlands, and subsequently pays taxes, Roovers highlighted.

“There is room for improvement and universities can play their part,” said Roovers, adding that BUas’s efforts already include both integrated and extracurricular Dutch language and culture modules offered to students and staff.

“A further boost, where customisation is paramount, for both Dutch and international students is something we stand for and would like to take the lead in this,” she added.

The country is desperately in need of young, highly motivated, and skilled people

“The country is desperately in need of young, highly motivated, and skilled people to enter the job market, remain in the Netherlands, have families and integrate, hence becoming successful,” said Peter Birdsall, president, Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences.

For Birdsall, higher education is the “simplest and easiest way” to implement this type of needed immigration.

“We do feel however, that it’s extremely important to have a clear profile of the type of students being recruited and what their opportunities are after their studies. The link with business and society, and the impact that international graduates could have in the Netherlands should be paramount when deciding which program to offer,” said Birdsall.

“As an example, simply offering a bachelors in business administration, without clear links to future jobs, or a program like psychology, without ascertaining whether these graduates could bring something beneficial to society has led to criticism.”

Almost 123,000 international students were enrolled in universities in the Netherlands or higher vocational education courses in the 2022/23 academic year, making up 15% of the total number of students – a figure which Birdsall said is “very much in line with a healthy international higher education policy”.

For him, internationalisation is “vital, as it’s part of the dynamic of the Dutch”.

MP and leader of the newly launched New Social Contract Party, Pieter Omtzigt – who favours stricter anti-international student measures – argued against Dutch taxpayers paying for the tuition fees of international students on the grounds that they normally return to their home countries after.

Birdsall expects the proposed law – aimed at reducing the number of English-taught courses on offer and managing international student numbers at public universities – will come into effect in the coming year, and that public universities of applied sciences and public research universities will be obliged to change most of the bachelor programs back to a majority ‘Dutch spoken’ format.

“There will most likely be a phasing out of the current English programs affected,” said Birdsall.

Wittenborg is one university set to be exempt from any changes in law, due to its status as an independent university of applied sciences.

The university’s student body of 1,500 students is 95% non-Dutch from around 100 different countries, with a yearly intake around 400 students.

Birdsall told The PIE the university remains following the situation closely and lobbying “where necessary”.

Universities and universities of applied sciences continue to share their feedback on the bill.

Simone Hackett, senior lecturer at The Hague University of Applied Sciences and a member of the EAIE General Council, told The PIE that “there seems to be a consensus from both the union of research universities and the union of universities of applied sciences as well as several other organisations and educational institutions, that the bill in its current state should not be passed”.

She said it is “not surprising” that universities of applied sciences object to the bill as according to Nuffic only 7.7% of the total student population such institutions are international and according to the Dutch Inspectorate of Education only 6% of bachelor programs are taught entirely in English, she added.

“If internationalisation and English-taught courses are to be cut back even further, it will affect students’ intercultural learning, we will have fewer international educators and scientists working at our universities and it will have damaging consequences on international cooperation and on the labour shortage,” said Hackett.

The post Netherlands: a third of international grads stay to work appeared first on The PIE News.

An education agent has been arrested by Indian authorities after police reportedly found fake transcripts in their office. 

Swati Soni, a director at KC Overseas Education, was arrested after authorities raided the company’s Anand offices in the state of Gujarat, according to local media. Soni was also a partner an immigration consultancy known as Galaxy Consultancy. 

It is understood that the Anand offices were a franchise branch of KC Overseas and the company has terminated its contract with the operators of the franchise.

A man accused of providing the marksheets was arrested alongside Soni. A police officer told reporters the transcripts were being used to help customers acquire UK visas. 

Representatives from KC Overseas said they had checked the academic documents of all students who had applied to partner institutions from the Anand branch and found them to be “genuine and in order”. 

They said Swati Soni was “acting independently” and the company was not involved in the incident. 

“KC Overseas maintains strict policies and processes to check and verify students’ applications and documents at our head office in Nagpur,” a KC Overseas spokesperson told The PIE News.

“We have a back-office team strength of over 650+ country experts who review and scrutinise each application and the authenticity of the documentation before it is submitted to our partner universities. 

“If we find any application to be incomplete or the documentation improper, we reject the application at the scrutiny stage itself. In this manner, we ensure that only the most filtered and eligible applications with genuine documentation reach the universities.”

The Association of Australian Education Representatives in India confirmed it has suspended KC Overseas as a member in line with its code of conduct and executives are awaiting more information.   

The incident has renewed concerns about the regulation of franchise and sub-aggregator models of student recruitment.

It follows the arrest in June of an agent accused of forging admission letters to Canadian colleges. Brijesh Mishra was formerly registered with edtech aggregator ApplyBoard, but the company has now revoked his access to the platform. 

“They cannot just pass the ball”

Nishidhar Reddy Borra, president of AAERI, said all agencies are responsible for the actions of their sub-agents and franchise branches. 

“They cannot just pass the ball,” he said. 

“The model adopted by tech-aggregators is also concerning, they appoint anyone and everyone as their agents, there is minimum checks or no checks. 

“Universities need to be careful while working with such aggregators.”

He added that AAERI is unable to take disciplinary action against sub-agents of aggregators. 

According to AgentBee, KC Overseas was working with approximately 3,000 sub-agents in June 2023, down from 9,000 at the start of the year. 

The post Aggregator model concerns renewed after agent arrest appeared first on The PIE News.

Taiwan is aiming to retain 210,000 international students after they have graduated in a bid to boost the region’s workforce.

The education ministry will set up overseas offices in countries including Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines to help meet its new target of attracting 320,000 international students by 2030. There were approximately 19,000 international students in Taiwan in 2022. Pre-covid the figure was close to 57,000.

Taiwan is grappling with an ageing population and declining birth rates. 

“The government must therefore take measures to proactively recruit international talent to fill gaps in domestic manpower and strengthen industrial competitiveness,” the country’s Executive Yuan wrote in a statement. 

“Improving the attraction and retention of international and overseas compatriot students is key among those measures.”

The strategy focuses on attracting STEM students due to “strong demand for talent” in these disciplines from Taiwan’s companies, deputy minister of education Liu Mon-chi reportedly said. 

Approximately $162 million will be invested in the plan, with eligible international students able to apply for government scholarships and living stipends from sponsoring companies. 

The majority of these students will take dual degrees, completing two years in their home countries and two years in Taiwan. 

Students will be expected to stay and work in Taiwan for an additional two years after graduation for the company that sponsored them, or pay back their scholarship. The government is set to streamline processes for securing residency in Taiwan to support the plans.

This plan is separate to the government’s existing international student recruitment plans, which focus on attracting undergraduate students to study full courses in Taiwan.

Earlier this year, a government watchdog accused the education and labour ministries of failing to protect overseas students from exploitation in the workplace. Yang said the new scholarships will mean students won’t face these issues.

“They should be able to focus on their two-year studies in Taiwan with the scholarships provided by the Taiwanese government, which include a one-way air ticket, visa application fees, and university tuition and fees,” Yang Yu-hui, director of the Department of Technological and Vocational Education, told reporters.

“Corporations working with universities would offer a monthly stipend of at least NT$10,000 [USD $312] and other job opportunities. These should be sufficient to cover daily expenses.” 

Taiwan launched its New Southbound Policy in 2016, which aims to build relations with countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Australasia, including deepening educational ties by offering scholarships to students in these regions.

Christopher Green, a researcher at National Chiayi University’s Department of Education, said it can be challenging for overseas students in STEM disciplines to find graduate work in Taiwan, in part due to language barriers. 

“Students come for the scholarship but generally are stuck”

“Students come for the scholarship and knowledge opportunities but generally are stuck and do not move to business within the country as they perhaps assumed would be the case,” he said. 

Taiwan’s universities have seen a reduction in enrolment levels, down 20% this year compared to 2012 levels . 

“International student recruitment is key to all universities both private and public,” Green said. 

“The current policies of pressure on women to work and men to work harder has led to many not having children or emigrating to other countries for better pay.

“The level of pay is one third of Korea or Japan. Taiwanese can go abroad and get better pay and therefore take their families with them.”

The post Taiwan launches new scholarships in bid to keep international graduates appeared first on The PIE News.