International higher education is a volatile business and countries and individual higher education institutions should beware of becoming too dependent on their income from foreign students, warns a new policy brief released by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, authored by Sir John Daniel, an education master at China’s DeTao Masters Academy. Global patterns of student mobility can change suddenly and dramatically, it says, not only when host countries introduce new immigration requirements, but also when large ‘sending’ countries, such as China and India, alter their attitudes to study abroad. In sum, HEIs planning to expand internationally should ‘look before they leap’ and then follow carefully the evolution of the policies of the foreign governments and institutions that can impact their activities. – Pat Donachie, EducationDive. Read more

UK universities could be facing over £80 million in credit card transaction charges every year while receiving and processing tuition payments from international students, according to new research from Western Union, a leader in global money transfer and payments services. In addition to the monetary cost, the survey found that nearly ten and a half hours a week are lost to matching, processing and reconciling payments from international students – the equivalent of 67 working days every year. Western Union’s research, in which 100 finance and admissions teams at universities across the UK were surveyed, shows that nearly half said the charges incurred from payments is the biggest challenge their institution faces when processing international tuition fees. Nearly a third said the time spent, and human resources required, to process overseas payments was their biggest challenge when receiving international tuition fees. – Markets Insider Businesswire. Read more

In debates about the world’s top performing education systems, the names usually mentioned are the Asian powerhouses such as Singapore and South Korea or Nordic countries such as Finland or Norway. But with much less recognition, Canada has climbed into the top tier of international rankings. The most recent round of international Pisa tests, run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), show Canada was one of a handful of countries to appear in the top 10 for maths, science and reading and reveal Canada’s teenagers as among the best educated in the world. At university level, Canada has the world’s highest proportion of working-age adults who have been through higher education – 55% compared with an average in OECD countries of 35%. – Sean Coughlan, BBC News, Business. Read More

The Swedish Migration Agency has rejected more than 10 residence permits for international students admitted for a study place as grant recipients at Swedish universities, claiming they have not adequately demonstrated that their primary aim for coming to Sweden is to study, according to reports by Radio Sweden. The rejection is due to the migration agency’s interpretation of the wording in the motivational letter sent by applicants for a student visa, and the impression that they gave when interviewed at a Swedish embassy abroad.  – Jan Petter Myklebust, University World News.  Read More

Many new PhDs in humanities disciplines report they struggle to find academic jobs – and many of the positions they do find available are off the tenure track, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The data, part of the Academy’s Humanities Indicators Project, show that PhD production in these fields is up, suggesting that the job shortage won’t go away. Humanities programs awarded 5,891 doctoral degrees in 2015, the largest number recorded since the start of collection of such information in 1987. The figure was 3,110 in 1988, rose steadily to 4,994 in 2000, dipped to about 4,700 from 2002 to 2007, and then started going up again, year after year. – Scott Jaschik, Inside HigherEd. Read More