More debates about foreign technology workers (many of whom were foreign students) in the USA

Further to our 6 April entry ‘Debating the possible decline of the USA’s attractiveness to foreign students and highly skilled foreign professionals‘, the New York Times sponsored a related debate (‘Do We Need Foreign Technology Workers?‘) on 8 April.  The six contributors (and the titles of their statements) are:

• Vivek Wadhwa, Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University (‘Our Real Problem Is the Brain Drain’)
• Norman Matloff, computer science professor, U.C. Davis (‘Suppressing Wages With Younger Workers’)
• Guillermina Jasso, sociology professor, N.Y.U. (‘A Work Force in Motion’)
• Ron Hira, public policy professor, Rochester Institute of Technology (‘Training Your Own Replacement’)
• Mark Heesen, National Venture Capital Association (‘Why Reject Entrepreneurial Spirit?’)
• John Miano, lawyer and computer programmer (‘Low Salaries, Low Skill’)

The debate has generated nearly 400 comments within day 1, and many (well some…) are worth reading to acquire a sense of the complexity of the issue and the often divergent viewpoints that exist.  Recall that the outcome of such debates have huge implications for graduate education in US universities, as well as the associated processes of ‘brain circulation’, ‘brain drain’, ‘brain gain’, etc.

I should add that the New York Times has a truly excellent group of cartographers on staff (I am biased here…some have UW-Madison ties).  The team has developed an associated interactive map (‘Immigration and Jobs: Where U.S. Workers Come From‘), and one of the many maps they produced is pasted in below.

Kris Olds

Debating the possible decline of the USA’s attractiveness to foreign students and highly skilled foreign professionals

The USA’s experience with the ongoing economic crisis has been generating some illuminating debates about the possible tightening of post-graduation options for foreign students (including in the STEM disciplines, as well as in Business).  Today’s Washington Post, for example, includes an article titled ‘U.S. visa limits hit Indian workers: job offers rescinded or hard to come by‘. The article includes these two segments:

As the U.S. economy slows, highly skilled foreign professionals seeking work under various visa programs are finding it harder to get jobs. President Obama’s stimulus package stops U.S. companies, largely in banking and financial services, that take federal bailout money from hiring H-1B visa holders for two years if they have laid off American workers in the previous six months. The administration has vowed to tighten restrictions and step up oversight of all work visa applications.

The H-1B program brings in about 85,000 skilled foreign workers every year, ostensibly to fill jobs that U.S. workers cannot or will not do. But some companies in the science and technology fields, afraid of a backlash over hiring foreign professionals rather than American ones, are rescinding job offers. Analysts say it is part of a wave of mounting anger in the United States over work visas, especially at a time when more than half a million Americans are being laid off every month.

“Hiring H-1B visa holders has become as toxic as giving out corporate bonuses,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke University professor and Harvard University research fellow.

….

During the past several months, the largest banks in the United States have announced 100,000 job cuts, [Bernard] Sanders said. Those same banks, which are receiving $150 billion in a taxpayer-funded bailout package, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions such as senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers and human resources specialists, Sanders said, citing an Associated Press review of visa applications that the banks filed with the Labor Department.

As the economy worsened last year and employees were laid off, the number of visas sought by the dozen banks in the AP analysis increased by nearly a third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

More than 5 million jobs have been lost since the U.S. economy fell into recession more than a year ago, according to the Labor Department.

But many immigration experts say shutting out the talent from abroad will only hurt U.S. competitiveness in the long run. “It’s really unfortunate because we will lose an entire generation of wonderful minds as a by-product,” Wadhwa said. “The next Google or Silicon Valley will be in Bangalore or Beijing.”

Nations such as Canada, Singapore and Australia have created “fast-track” immigration policies and incentives to attract foreign professionals.

A 1 April 2009 article (‘A rush for work visas even as demand dips‘) in the New York Times covers similar terrain.

This debate is being entered from a variety of perspectives.  One that is particularly relevant to GlobalHigherEd was put forward by AnnaLee Saxenian in the Financial Times on 29 March 2009 in a piece titled ‘Soapbox: Cold welcome in the US‘. Saxenian, author of some key books on regional development (Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128) as well as skilled migration (The New Argonauts), links the tightening of borders to the possible emergence of challenges to US universities to recruit the best and the brightest foreign students.  She frames the issue this way:

As policymakers in Europe and Asia create incentives to attract talented immigrants, there is growing resentment towards foreign workers in the US, based on the mistaken view that they displace native-born workers. In fact, foreign-born scientists have created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, billions of dollars of revenue and substantial wealth in the US, primarily in high-technology sectors.

It is natural that many immigrants wish to return home. And economies benefit from “brain circulation” and the global ties that highly skilled immigrants build with their home country counterparts. These “new Argonauts” have contributed to the emergence of dynamic new centres of entrepreneurship and innovation in developing regions from Taiwan and Israel to Bangalore and Shanghai.

But circulation is a two-way street. The survey suggests the US is losing the openness that made it a magnet for the most talented immigrants. The health of US universities depends on the economy. In coming years, even the greatest universities will be challenged as developing economies invest their own systems of higher education.

Saxenian’s article draws from collaborative work being supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (see a recent report cover above).

Will the economic problems facing US university budgets also be matched by a decline in interest in coming to US universities given (a) concern about the lack of opportunity to acquire employment in the US after graduation, and (b) the emergence of more tantalizing and/or accessible higher education opportunities in other countries?

And what is being done to indirectly open up higher education systems, and post-graduation employment opportunities, in non-US countries such that they can take advantage of the political and economic challenges being faced in the US? Take note, for example, of the service sector impact figures I just reported on in Australia (see ‘Making sense of the economic contribution of international students in Australia (up to 2008)‘) that undeniably play a role in advocacy and lobbying to keep Australian borders open to foreign students, especially from countries like China and India (that have historically streamed towards the US).

The possible decline of the US as a key student migration destination, and subsequent place of employment, might be good or bad depending on which perspective one adopts, yet it is clearly worth thinking about given the unsettling effects it would have upon the global higher education landscape.

Kris Olds

Update: link here for the 31 March 2009 NAFSA Statement: H-1B Visas, which includes this segment:

As America and the world fall deeper into recession, it is important to break free of the rhetoric of the political debate and refocus on the fundamentals. One fundamental is that talent is always a scarce resource. There is not enough of it to go around, and every country needs more of it. Talent is also, in today’s world, highly mobile. Our economy is part of a global economy, and our job market is part of a global job market. In such a market, employers look for the talent they need wherever they can find it, and students and skilled workers look for the places to study and work that offer them the most opportunity.

To turn away individuals with skills that we need, who want to live and work in America, under the illusion that by doing so we are protecting our economy, is to deny ourselves a resource that we need to help pull us out of the recession and put our economy on a sound footing for the future. It will cost jobs, not save them.

Sweetening Canada’s offer in the race for global talent: a new immigration class eases the route to permanent residency for foreign students

International students are the focus of front-page news in Canada this week with the launch of the long-anticipated new immigration scheme, the “Canadian Experience Class.”

Intended to fast-track foreign students and skilled workers currently in Canada from temporary migrant to permanent resident status (and potentially to Canadian citizens), this new program continues a series of recent changes implemented by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) seeking to enhance Canada’s economic competitiveness through the attraction and retention of highly educated migrants. Details of the program are outlined here in the Canada Gazette.

Like the existing immigration points-based system, this new program evaluates applicants on a range of criteria. However unlike the traditional economic class route, this stream makes work or study experience in Canada a key factor in gaining admission. Now international students, along with workers in select skilled occupations and professions that have studied or worked for two years in Canada, may apply to become landed immigrants from within the country, no longer needing to leave to join the (backlogged) overseas queues after their studies.

As quoted in the Globe and Mail (Aug 13, 2008: a1), a CIC spokeswoman explained the change is part of revamping Canada’s immigration approach to compete with “rival destinations such as Australia and the United Kingdom.” This framing is significant for several reasons.

First, CIC’s language acknowledges a shift in immigration policy logic from one based on broad nation building to one based on keeping pace with other countries competing to gain advantage in their ability to attract migrants for the knowledge economy. As political scientist Ayelet Shachar (2006) has argued, the policy framework of many immigrant-receiving countries is no longer driven primarily to meet domestic needs, but to keep up with the offer on hand from other countries also trying to become the next “IQ magnet” in the ever-spiralling global race for ‘talent’. The rationale is that if international students can become permanent residents immediately after their studies, then this may have the desired effect of increasing the likelihood that many will remain post-graduation and contribute to the Canadian economy, as well as making Canada a more appealing educational destination for young migrants at the outset.

Second, from a national perspective, international student mobility has historically served a multifaceted role as both an element of international political relations (think of programs such as the Fulbright and Commonwealth Scholarships), and as an increasingly lucrative industry.

In recent years, however, many governments have also begun to place greater emphasis on the innovation and labour market potential inherent in mobile students and researchers. Canada’s new scheme – along with the recent announcement that post-graduation work permits for students would be extended to a three-year duration – indicate the heightened interest placed by the Canadian government on the potential longer-term economic contributions that foreign students can make.

So what to make of these developments?

On one hand, they certainly fit with contemporary theories in economic development planning that emphasize the importance of developing a diverse, educated and skilled labour force as a necessary context for sustained economic vitality, and the ability for universities to feed into this process at a local scale. International graduates can make particularly valued contributions to such strategies through their different academic and cultural traditions as well as transnational research and social networks. Advocates of international students will likely also laud this new initiative for enabling those already in Canada who have established ties and made intellectual, economic, and social contributions to remain with greater security, if they so choose.

On the other hand, however, there are several concerns and potential consequences worth considering.

First, this new class does not address – and may further exacerbate – existing problems of excessively long waiting lists for overseas immigration applicants.

Second, and even more disquieting, this new ‘class’ promotes unequal access to the protection and rights attributed to Canadian permanent residents by excluding lower-skilled labourers who also make important contributions to the Canadian economy and society and who comprise the majority of temporary permit holders.  It is important to ask whether Canada wants to advance a system with differential paths to citizenship based largely on the fluctuating economic valuation of certain types of knowledge.

Lastly, it also seems probable that this new fast-track scheme will become an admissions strategy for young migrants able to afford the expense of studying as an international student in Canada. While the financial picture for international students is complex, varying from high tuition fees for most undergraduate studies to receiving scholarships for funded graduate students, the financial accessibility to this potential route to citizenship complicates the already unclear picture wherein international students are desired for their future ambassadorial roles, for their financial contributions to individual institutions, and/or for their potential economic input as desired young researchers and future ‘knowledge workers’.

Time will tell if these various objectives can succeed in co-mingling or if tensions and contradictions in the diverse strategies involving the spheres of higher education, research, immigration, and economic development will emerge.

Reference

Shachar, A. 2006. The race for talent: Highly skilled migrants and competitive immigration regimes. New York University Law Review, 8(April): 148-206.

Kate Geddie

Strategic communications via global higher ed: the Uniting Students in America (USA) proposal

Further to our entry on the new Rand report (U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology), today’s Chronicle of Higher Education includes coverage (‘Subcommittees Debate Proposal to Bring International Students to U.S.‘)of some global higher ed-related testimony on 19 June 2008 at the United States House of Representatives. This news item is, in some ways, the higher ed side of the higher ed/research dynamic that is becoming framed in global geopolitical and geoeconomic senses by elites in the United States, Europe, Australasia, and so on.

In the context of a joint session sponsored by the US House Foreign Affairs (Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight) and the House Education and Labor Committee (Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness), advocates for the Restoring America’s Leadership through Scholarships for Undergraduates from Developing Countries: The Uniting Students in America (USA) Proposal testified yesterday. The witnesses, as they are deemed, were:

• George Scott (Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security Team, Government Accountability Office)
• Philip O. Geier (Executive Director, Davis United World College Scholars Program). Testimony available here.
• William B. DeLauder (President Emeritus, Delaware State College, Counselor to the President, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges). Testimony available here.
• Philip O. Clay (Director, International Admissions and Services, University of Texas – Pan American). Testimony available here.
• Rachel C. Ochako (Scholar, Davis United World College Scholars Program, Middlebury College). Testimony available here.
• David S. North (Fellow, Center for Immigration Studies). Testimony available here.

As the Chronicle notes, the plan for the “Uniting Students in America” proposal:

would finance 7,500 scholarships each year for undergraduates from foreign countries who come from low-income families. Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts who is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, said he plans to introduce a bill by the end of the summer that would create the scholarship program. The program is projected to cost $1-billion over four years and would assist 30,000 students per year by the time it is fully phased in.

The testimonies point to a desire to more intensely weave together the dual objectives of international development and the enhancement of the reputational standing of the United States in the world via global higher ed. Indeed, the title of the hearing – Restoring America’s Leadership through Scholarships for Undergraduates from Developing Countries – is a blunt statement that in many ways says it all. Yet it is really the testimonies that provide the nuance and flesh to this agenda. On this note, here are some lengthy quotes from two of the speakers.

First, Philip O. Geier (Executive Director, Davis United World College Scholars Program):

Much has been written about America’s role and reputation in today’s post Cold War and post 9/11 context. Much of that literature is ideological, lacking both balance in perspective and a constructive long term strategic view of America’s special place in the world. While an exhaustive discussion of this literature is beyond the scope of this hearing, this does seem an appropriate place to suggest a few ways to achieve greater balance and a greater focus on long term approaches to America’s positive engagement with the rest of the world.

We would be well served to find a greater balance between our “hard power” and our “soft power.” We would be equally well served to find ways to build in-depth, personal relationships between the most promising future leaders in our country and their counterparts from elsewhere in the world.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates articulated these objectives clearly in a speech given on November 26, 2007. He said, “…based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former director of C.I.A. and now as secretary of defense, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use ‘soft power’ and for better integrating it with ‘hard power…. ’ We are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about policies and goals…. We can expect that asymmetric warfare will be the mainstay of the contemporary battlefield for some time. These conflicts will be fundamentally political in nature and require the application of all elements of national power. Success will be less a matter of imposing one’s will and more a function of shaping behavior of friends, adversaries and, most importantly, the people in between.”

Secretary Gates was drawing from the work of Joseph S. Nye Jr.’s Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (2004) which contends that effective public diplomacy includes “building long-term relationships that create an enabling environment for government policies.” Nye maintains we need to develop “lasting relationships with key individuals….”

Similarly, in January 2008, we were presented with the report [cover image above] of the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee constituted jointly by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State. Its co-chairs’ message stated: “Our long term success requires not only that we deter and detect determined adversaries, but also that we persuade millions of people around the globe of our ideals – democratic freedom, private enterprise, human rights, intellectual pursuit, technological achievement.”

One of the key recommendations of the Secure Borders and Open Doors report was that “the U.S. should articulate a comprehensive policy for attracting international students….”

In my view, we are approaching an opportune time for some reformulation of our foreign policy. While we must continue to take all necessary measures to ensure our security, we should also become more pro-active in promoting our nation’s values and opportunities to others so that they can truly understand and benefit from our way of life. In this context, we can leverage one of our country’s most unique strengths, its institutions of higher learning. While worldwide opinion polls would suggest that America has lost its allure, there is no question that America’s colleges and universities remain the envy of the world and that an opportunity to gain a degree in the U.S. is without compare.

And second, from William B. DeLauder (President Emeritus, Delaware State College, Counselor to the President, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges):

I believe that there is a broad consensus around the country that student mobility contributes greatly to fostering goodwill and better understandings between nations. Some have called this a form of educational diplomacy. To be effective it must occur both ways – i.e., more American students studying abroad and more international students studying in this country.

As stated in the Report of the NASULGC Task Force on International Education [cover image above], “The goodwill and strong personal ties to this nation built through generations of students coming to our colleges and universities from around the world are important underpinnings of U.S. foreign relations.” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed it this way: “International students and scholars enrich our communities with their academic abilities and cultural diversity and they return home with an increased understanding and often a lasting affection for the United States. I can think of no more valuable asset to our country than the friendship of future world leaders who have been educated here.”….

The USA Program therefore should contribute to improving the image of the United States abroad and thereby improve our diplomacy abroad. As several studies have shown, our image around the world is badly tarnished. International students who study in one of our colleges or universities will have an opportunity to meet and talk with American students and others from diverse backgrounds, to experience the diverse American culture, to learn about American democracy, to learn about American institutions, and to obtain a valuable undergraduate education that will be a strong asset in their life pursuits. Many of these students are expected to become future leaders within their respective countries. They will bring with this new responsibility a better understanding of the United States that should enhance their countries’ relationships with the United States.

In some ways this is nothing new: countries around the world have always sought to use scholarships to enhance their strategic communicative capacity, build their economies (through the import of skilled labour), build capacity in other countries, and so on. Yet these are interesting time in the US as the end of the Bush/Cheney era approaches.

Given the rhetoric in these testimonies it might seem like the US should be poised to launch, under the leadership of McCain or Obama, a much more substantial material and symbolic drive to support a vast number of global higher ed linkage schemes, including via the offer of scholarships to students from developing countries. However, the counter-current forces and hurdles are substantial despite the swell we are seeing now re. strategic communications agendas. These include increasing social anxiety in the US about access to a very expensive higher education system, a startling fiscal mess enabled by the Bush/Cheney regime, an ideological disconnect with the idea of state-led action via ‘soft power’ (US neoconservatives being more inclined to use state largesse for the tools associated with ‘hard power’), an existing sense of global higher ed dominance in some political circles (i.e. why spend more when we’re No. 1 already), and the lack of a national approach to higher education, let along global higher ed, as Lloyd Armstrong has noted in Changing Higher Ed.

This is an ongoing debate worth watching as the US prepares itself for a significant national political transition.

Kris Olds

“New Zealand Educated”: rebranding New Zealand to attract foreign students

In June 2007 Education New Zealand, the peak industry body for institutions involved in the sale of education to foreign students in New Zealand, launched a new national brand. The New Zealand Educated brand (from which the images in this entry are sourced) is designed to represent and to lead a new phase of development in the sale of educational products to foreign students. The Brand is far more than simply a logo or a coherent message for developing promotional materials. It is based upon and expresses the strategic logic of industry development generated at a national level under the auspices of Education New Zealand over the last three years. Similarly, whilst much of such material is directed at foreign students studying in New Zealand, the new brand represents an imaginary of a far wider and more expansive international education industry. Narrowly, the brand will be used in all offshore promotional and marketing collateral designed to attract students to New Zealand to study. More widely it is the front end of a strategic reassessment of offshore trade shows and other commercial events promoted by Education New Zealand, its domestic public relations, its website, and its relationships with both the New Zealand government and off-shore institutional partners in education programmes.

Three points may be of particular interest to readers of GlobalHigherEd. First, the national branding of international education activities by New Zealand operators is a feature of the New Zealand case. Education New Zealand has in the last decade been transformed into an efficient and professional peak body. Now funded by a marketing levy against all operators, it has taken advantage of the crisis prompted by the slump in sales to Chinese students and subsequent rationalisation and reprofessionalisation of activities among its members to emphasise and accentuate their mutual interests in Brand New Zealand. By working strategically in changing conditions Education New Zealand has sought to marginalise sectoral differences among its members and build a more coherent and integrated national product. It has now branded that product.

In this rebranding, Education New Zealand has placed international education firmly within the family of product/industry specific ‘Brand New Zealand’ so creatively symbolised by the erection of a giant rugby-ball-shaped trade stand in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower for 18 days during the recent Rugby World Cup in France (photo courtesy of Kris Olds). Although somewhat deflated by New Zealand’s early exit from a contest that it was expected to win, the ball, labelled ‘100% Pure New Zealand’, reveals the extent of national branding and the political project of economic nationalism that underpins it. As one of New Zealand’s leading export earners and with powerful messages of youth, tourism and knowledge economy to sell Brand New Zealand international education featured prominently in the imaginary of the ball.

Second, in the design of the new brand, the brand makers have made a careful assessment of the tag-lines, messages and advantages of competitors as well as national strengths. That they chose to do so and the imaging that they discovered in doing so reveals the increasing deployment of brand expertise and logics in many places, and the increasing presence of nation branding. It is suggests a new moment in far more professionalised inter-national competition.

The third interest lies in precisely what new brand values are being attached to Brand New Zealand International Education. The new ‘New Zealand Educated’ brand rebrands international education in New Zealand. It displaces one half of the old logo ‘The New World Class: New Zealand Educated’, as well as the multiple and wordy tag lines of ‘warm and welcoming environments’, ‘world class institutions’, ‘high quality living conditions’, ‘world leading courses and degrees’, ‘association with fresh thinkers’, ‘recreation in paradise’, and ‘British based education system’. These messages, somewhat cumbersome and highly defensive, were targeted at a bulk market largely out of Asia that was undifferentiated and knew little about New Zealand. The target was imagined as much to be parents as students and the place of information gathering and purchase was imagined to be the trade fair.

A new set of taglines, again a family of seven, pushes similar messages about a modern, friendly, British-based, out-doors, and green New Zealand, but one that is far more vibrant, globally connected, youthful, and exciting. Crucially it appears to imagine students as savvy, active agents, with subjectivities already located in the new global class elite and seeking an international education that will allow them to perform their lives within this elite – as leisure/experience consumers as well as actual or prospective creative entrepreneurs and knowledge workers. Hence, the seven tag lines are now ‘connected’, ‘inventive’, trusted’, ‘personal’, ‘adventurous’, ‘lively’, and ‘welcoming’. The photographic images are of self-confident, sophisticated students. The expectation now appears to be that the market place is on-line and the purchaser the savvy student. The text behind the tag lines presumes and more subtly restates New Zealand’s global credentials.

The ‘New World Class’ was designed to secure a high volume supply chain in a emerging market for international students where New Zealand was positioned as a high-reputation, third-tier provider. In this market imaginary, the product was largely English language acquisition. New Zealand enjoyed certain key advantages from its safety, environmental reputation, national organisation, and British colonial history. The ‘New Zealand Educated’ brand recognises a much more sophisticated and competitive market place, but again one in which New Zealand enjoys similar advantages. However, these must be repackaged for a new local industry trajectory, a far more sophisticated and intermediated marketplace in which the expertise of branding is now being brought to bear, and new consumers.

Nick Lewis

Freefall in the Australian higher education market?

Today’s report by Geoff Maslen for the University World News (9th December) – on whether the Australia’s A$11 billion a year education export market is facing a potentially catastrophic fall – must have Australian politicians and university managers shaking in their boots. The figures, it seems, are in something of a free-fall….and any spinning out of control is likely to leave a pretty large hole in the economy. As Maslen notes:

Foreign students now contribute $2.4 billion a year to university coffers. Yet the flow of new students arriving in Australia to undertake university courses has plummeted from double digit increases in the early 2000s to low single-digit increases.

In the first years to 2007, the number of overseas students undertaking university award courses on campuses in Australia jumped by more than 50% to hit 175,000 for the first time. But, over that period, annual enrolment growth fell successively from 17% to 12% to 8% and this year it is down to less than 4%.

Maslen goes on to suggest that a major reason contributing to the fall is the change in the visa processes tied to the skilled migration program. Large numbers of students come to Australia from India and China with the express purpose of gaining permanent residency once they have completed their studies. However, it seems that employers have been complaining about the poor levels of English competence amongst these students, making them unsuitable for much more than casual work. As a result, students who apply to stay on will face stricter tests of their English language competence following completion of their studies and as part of their application for permanent residence.

Maslen may well be right here. However, GlobalHigherEd can’t help but think that this isn’t  the major reason, especially as it is referring to students applying to stay on once they have completed studies, rather than those who are planning to come in the first place and who may at this point feel a lot more confident about their ability to learn and use English.

What surely must also be an important factor in this mix is the growing levels of competitiveness from those who were once smaller players in the education export business – countries like France and Germany – for example, who are now regarded as potentially desirable destinations given a move toward English language instruction at the graduate level and with lower fees and moderate living costs and who are wooing Chinese students.

The USA, too, has had time to reflect on its own position, and is now reporting an increase in overseas student numbers following the post Sept 11 period when things were definitely heading in the wrong direction. US higher education institutions have invested in people and new processes in an attempt to turn around the decline in numbers and it seems that, at least for some institutions, this is paying off.

Finally, relative currency exchange trends are clearly not moving in Australia’s favour in comparison to the country’s competitors, especially the US.

What is clear is that, once in the game, there is absolutely no room for complacency – or the outcomes are potentially catastrophic, not only for the economy but for the institutions most directly affected.

Susan Robertson

Canada lags in competition for talented foreign graduates

GlobalHigherEd has made several entries over the past month on changing trends in international student mobility, including one that situates the Canadian experience, and one that ponders what impacts the fast rising Canadian $ (the Loonie) might generate. A report released last week by the Canadian Bureau of International Education (CBIE) makes explicit a emerging strategy in relation to student mobility: retaining international students upon completion of their studies to contribute to the needs of the local and/or national labour market.

In a new report titled Northern Lights: International Graduates of Canadian Institutions and the National Workforce, the CBIE presents results of a survey with over 900 international students upon the completion of their studies in Canadian universities. The findings suggest that international students are “anxious and cynical” about employment opportunities in Canada upon graduation. Despite the recent introduction of work permit programs enabling international students to remain in Canada for one or two years after their studies (permits are limited to one year for students having studied or seeking work in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal), only 1/3 of students felt they would participate in such schemes, whereas another 1/3 expected to return home, and 1/3 were considering seeking employment elsewhere.

In assessing these findings, the authors take a clear strategic policy stance. Framing these results within a looming labour shortage due to the imminent retirement of Canada’s aging baby boomers, the report’s authors argue that retaining international students post-graduation is a complementary initiative to existing Canadian labour market development strategies, such as the skilled immigrant worker program and encouraging continued workforce participation among the aging population. The existing challenges are identified as an ever-heightening national competition for talent with greater opportunities for graduates abroad, as well as unnecessary complications to enter the Canadian and reluctance among employers. In conclusion, the CBIE directly calls for the Canadian government to both strengthen Canada’s weakening position as an international education destination and then to enhance retention rates of graduates through improved information dissemination among officials, institutions, and students.

The multiple benefits accrued by nations attracting large numbers of international students have long been recognized. In recent years, the positive benefit has been primarily discussed in terms of the direct short-term financial contribution provided by high foreign student fees to national higher education sectors. This report’s emphasis, notably coming from a non-governmental membership organization representing Canadian institutions from the K-12 to postgraduate levels, as well as public and private sectors, with research collaboration from Queen’s University and with funding from the Canadian Council of Learning, suggests a shift in interest towards the longer-term potential gain that international students might provide as potential knowledge workers in the global competition for talent. It seems national strategies of brain drain or brain circulation may be replaced with the brain ‘train and retain’ of international graduates.

Kate Geddie

Brainpower famine in Eastern Europe: food for thought

The Brussels based think-tank, The Lisbon Council, sees trouble ahead for the countries of both Western and Eastern Europe. The Eastern European low-wage, low-tax, FDI-driven growth rates of today, accelerated by membership of the EU, are not going to last. A combination of low-birth rates and increasing brain drain will combine to fix their economic trajectories at well below the EU average with no prospect of improvement. And that is a problem for Western Europe too: it has been the dynamism of the East which has given a fillip to the West.

In its just issued report, The European Human Capital Index: The Challenge of Central and Eastern Europe, the Lisbon Council claims:

There is a very real risk that in coming decades Central and Eastern Europe could become a sparsely-populated area with a declining workforce that will have to shoulder the burden of a population set to experience unprecedented levels of aging and decline. At stake is nothing less than the long-term sustainability of these remarkable countries, which have added so much to Europe’s history, economy and diversity.

Now, if we look beyond the doom-laden futurology and risk of future collapse which seems to be so much a part of these calls for action, we can begin to see the contradictions in the analysis and the prescriptions. The EU economy is driven by processes of centralization and concentration and we can see this in the movements of knowledge, technology and capital. Universities are heavily implicated in this and the mobility of students and the highly skilled is the brain drain which is going to accelerate the emptying of the East. The extension of service and production commodity chains into the East and the region’s growth as a consumer market has gone hand in hand with their low tax, flexible labor laws and low state spending. In short the growth model is predicated on the very things which the Human Capital Index measures as being lacking.

The Lisbon Council solutions – reformed universities, on the job skills training, investment in knowledge, skills and innovation – require a shift in the growth model and the question is, how to achieve that within the context of macro and micro economic orthodoxy, the EU promotion of mobility and double-think about brain drain. At the time of the formation of the EU single market there was a response – the EU as a whole had to invest in the conditions for more and better jobs and a geographical spread so that capital, technology and knowledge are shifted away from concentration and centralization. The problems and solutions were posed in those terms which of course requires an increased European tax base and a commitment to significantly greater regional re-distribution and planning.

The challenges have always been clear and the solutions filled with all sorts of dilemmas which don’t even get a mention from the Lisbon Council. Human capital mantras suggest that the governments in Eastern Europe need to improve the supply of human capital, invest more in formal education, create their entrepreneurial universities and attract migrant (cheap) labor from the potentially massive new pool of Turkey etc. And so move themselves onto a different growth path. Perhaps.

One thing that is increasingly clear, is that the Economics of Education and the Human Capital theorists, and this report comes straight out of that stable, can offer descriptions based on such measures as its Human Capital Index, but its policy relevance is restricted and amounts to the same old same old. Quite how societies approaching the sorts of collapse envisaged in the report would react and what shibboleths of neo-liberal human capital development models would then be questioned seems to be beyond their remit. A pity.

Peter Jones

EU Blue Cards: not a blank cheque for migrant labour – says Barroso

The global competition for skilled labor looks like getting a new dimension – the EU is planning to issue “blue cards” to allow highly skilled non-Europeans to work in the EU. On Tuesday 23 October José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, announced plans to harmonize admission procedures for highly qualified workers. As President Barroso put it:

With the EU Blue Card we send a clear signal: Highly skilled people from all over the world are welcome in the European Union. Let me be clear: I am not announcing today that we are opening the doors to 20 million high-skilled workers! The Blue Card is not a “blank cheque”. It is not a right to admission, but a demand-driven approach and a common European procedure.

The Blue Card will also mean increased mobility for high-skilled immigrants and their families inside the EU.

Member States will have broad flexibility to determine their labour market needs and decide on the number of high-skilled workers they would like to welcome.

With regard to developing countries we are very much aware of the need to avoid negative “brain drain” effects. Therefore, the proposal promotes ethical recruitment standards to limit – if not ban – active recruitment by Member States in developing countries in some sensitive sectors. It also contains measures to facilitate so-called “circular migration”. Europe stands ready to cooperate with developing countries in this area.

Further details are also available in this press release, with media and blog coverage available via these pre-programmed Google searches. As noted the proposed scheme would have a common single application procedure across the 27 Member States and a common set of rights for non-EU nationals including the right to stay for two years and move within the EU to another Member State for an extension of one more year.

The urgency of the introduction of the blue card is framed in terms of competition with the US/Canada/Australia – the US alone attracts more than half of all skilled labor while only 5 per cent currently comes to the EU. This explanation needs to be seen in relation to two issues which the GlobalHigherEd blog has been following: the competition to attract and retain researchers and the current overproduction of Maths, Science and Technology graduates. Can the attractiveness of the EU as a whole compete with the pull of R&D/Industrial capacity in the US and the logic of English as the global language? Related to this obviously is the recent enlargement to 27 Member States where there are ongoing issues around the mobility of labor within the EU? We will continue to look beneath the claims of policy initiatives to see the underlying contradictions in approaches. The ongoing question of the construction of a common European labor market and boosting the attractiveness of EU higher ed institutions may be at least as important here as the supposed skilled labor shortages.

Futurology demographics seem to be at the heart of the explanation of the need to intensify the recruitment of non-EU labour – according to the Commission the EU will have a shortage of 20 million workers in the next 20 years, with one third of the EU population over the age of 65. Interestingly though, there is no specification of the kinds of skill shortages that far down the line – the current concern is that the EU currently receives 85 % of global unskilled labour.

Barroso and the Commission continue to try to handle the contradictions of EU brain attractiveness strategies by the preferred model of:

• fixed term contracts;
• limitations on recruitment from developing countries in sensitive sectors; and,
• the potentially highly tendentious notion of ‘circular migration’.

High skilled labour is effectively on a perpetual carousel of entry to and exit from the labour market with equal rights while in the EU which get lost at the point of departure from the EU zone only to reappear on re-entry, perhaps?

According to Reuters the successful applicants for a blue card would only need to be paid twice the minimum wage in the employing Member State – and this requirement would be lifted if the applicant were to be a graduate from an EU higher education institution. Two things are of interest here then – the blue card could be a way to retain anyone with a higher education qualification and there are implications for the continuing downward pressure on wage rates for the university educated. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out in relation to the attractiveness of EU universities if a blue card is the implied pay-off for successful graduation.

Peter D. Jones

Competitive advantage and the mobile international student

Last week GlobalHigherEd featured a series of stories on the different players battling for market share in the global higher education market. We reviewed the recently published report by the Observatory of Borderless Higher Education (OBHE).

Today’s Inside Higher Ed also features a story from this report, drawing particular attention to the competitive advantages of the different players. These include whether students require a visa for short study visits, the cost of tuition (low or moderate), living costs (low or moderate), and whether there are programs available to foreign students to help them to prepare for study before they start classes – presumably language classes.

As we pointed out last week, France and Germany ‘scrub up’ well as possible study destinations – particularly for short periods. They have low tuition fees and moderate living costs, and their visa system would be present few problems for undergraduates wanting a short period of ‘study abroad’ . This might also be a useful tactic in luring back students to enrol in a graduate program, particularly if their experience is a positive one.

By comparison, the UK – a Major Player in the field like the US and Australia –scores only one tick in the competitive advantage box; that is, in their provision of programs to help students prepare for study. The downside for the prospective student is that the UK has a high living cost and high tuition fees. It does, however, have a relatively high brand image and ‘esteem’ value – something that Inside Higher Ed fails to point out.

As the market gets tighter, GlobalHigherEd agrees with Inside Higher Ed – that there are important strategic decisions to be made by institutions and countries if they want to not only stay competitive but increase market share. How might a nation go about making itself a desirable destination in this highly lucrative market? Alternatively, a country might currently be a desirable destination, but at present there are limited financial returns (aside from the not inconsequential returns through cost of living). The issue here for these low (or no) fee countries, such as Germany, France and Finland, is whether to respond to pressures to charge fees. Currently their figures of international students are multiplying rapidly – by more than 500% over the past five or so years. Will putting a fee structure into place for international students simply turn the tap off? This dilemma is likely to cause university administrators  more than a minor headache.

Susan Robertson

Intellectual property, the immigration backlog, and a reverse brain-drain

Gary Gereffi and his colleagues have been working on a number of relevant (to the themes we are interested in) projects, especially global value chains and the associated processes that govern global networks while also grounding these chains in particular localities. They recently released a report titled Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog, and a Reverse Brain-Drain.

Key findings, according the new release on the Kauffman Foundation‘s web site, include:

• Foreign nationals residing in the United States were named as inventors or co-inventors in 25.6 percent of international patent applications filed from the United States in 2006. This represents an increase from 7.6 percent in 1998.

• Foreign nationals contributed to more than half of the international patents filed by a number of large, multi-national companies, including Qualcomm (72 percent), Merck & Co. (65 percent), General Electric (64 percent), Siemens (63 percent) and Cisco (60 percent). Forty-one percent of the patents filed by the U.S. government had foreign nationals as inventors or co-inventors.

• In 2006, 16.8 percent of international patent applications from the United States had an inventor or co-inventor with a Chinese-heritage name, representing an increase from 11.2 percent in 1998. The contribution of inventors with Indian-heritage names increased to 13.7 percent from 9.5 percent in the same period.

• The total number of employment-based principals in the employment-based categories and their family members waiting for legal permanent residence in the United States in 2006 was estimated at 1,055,084. Additionally, there are an estimated 126,421 residents abroad also waiting for employment-based U.S. legal permanent residence, adding up to a worldwide total of 1,181,505.

My colleague Fazal Rizvi, currently visting UNESCO here in Paris, has been highlighting the increased convergence and strategic articulation of policies related to higher education, human mobility, and economic development. Clearly researchers have been working on all three of these themes for many years, though it is the articulation process knitting these policies together that is seriously under-examined.