Global Student Mobility and the Twenty-First Century Silk Road: National Trends and New Directions

Abstract

With 3.3 million students currently studying outside their own country, global student mobility, or the migration of students across borders for a higher education, is a burgeoning phenomenon that affects countries and their academic systems. This number represents a 65 percent increase since 2000, and the greatest surge in international student enrollments in recent decades. The magnitude of this migration is so significant that in the United States alone higher education is the fifth largest service export sector, with in-bound international students contributing US$17.7 billion to the economy each year (Bhandari and Chow 2009). Similarly, a recent report by the industry body Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India (ASSOCHAM) found that about 450,000 Indian students migrate overseas and spend US$13 billion each year on acquiring a higher education abroad, often because of the lack of capacity in domestic institutions. But although the rapid growth of mobility is relatively recent, the desire to acquire a higher education beyond national borders is itself not new: students and scholars have always sought learning at the best higher education institutions around the world as a way to broaden their educational and cultural horizons. What have changed, however, are the drivers of student mobility and the new modalities through which this migration occurs.

A similar chapter by the primary author appeared in Higher Education on the Move: New Developments in Global Mobility. New York: Institute of International Education, 2009.