Some of you may have seen an article earlier this week from Phil Altbach and Hans De Wit (the former and current Directors of the Centre for Higher Education at Boston College).  Do read the whole thing, but in brief, the authors are wondering whether or not higher education’s “era of internationalization” is coming to an end, citing a variety of issues popping up across around the world including:

Now, I am a huge fan of both these authors (full disclosure: Phil is my hero), and there is some overlap between the scenario they paint and the argument I made back here in the summer of 2016 about the precariousness of the internationalization.  But on the whole I think they are overstating the case, mainly because they are mostly looking at things from the point of view of the exporting counties rather than importing ones.

(side note: in the weird world of higher education, and the notion of importing and exporting are reversed.  Exporting countries are ones who sell, and importing countries who buy.  But from a population perspective it’s counterintuitive: importing countries send students away, exporting countries take in students from abroad.  Just remember, it’s about the direction of the financial flows, not the population flows).

Everything Altbach and De Wit say about the problems in exporting countries is true (and they also fairly note that countries like Canada are bucking the trend).  But look at things from the demand side instead and you get a different picture.  Is a distinctive, quality, English-language getting less important in India?  Does Xi Jinping’s elevation to Leader for Life make it less likely that a nervous Chinese middle-class will want to gain a foothold abroad through a child’s education (and, let’s face it, quite often some associated property acquisition)?  What about growing authoritarianism in Russia or Turkey?  Or weak Latin American economies?  Surely all of this implies a growth in demand ahead, not a slackening.

Even allowing Altbach & De Wit their argument that many exporting countries are reaching the limit of their exporting ability, the persistence and perhaps even intensification of demand suggest there are at least three eventualities which are more likely than an end to internationalization.  First, and most likely, is that international student fees will continue to rise (an entirely normal reaction which demand exceeds supply).  Second, non-financial rationing mechanisms may become more important (i.e. universities in exporting countries will be able to become choosier about which students they accepted.  Neither of those things are going to be seen as negatives by those institutions who are lucky enough to benefit from them.

And then there is a third possibility – namely that if universities can’t export from their home soil, there are always alternatives such as exporting from a foreign base.  That could mean more branch campuses in places like India if India ever gets around to modernizing its higher education laws; alternatively it could mean that countries like the Maldives and Dubai actually do become offshore education havens, where US and UK universities educate tens of even hundreds of thousands of students from India and the Middle East.

Canada, of course, will prosper in the new world: if other countries don’t want to meet rising demand, we’ll happily take up some of the slack.  So, I imagine, will the Aussies and the Kiwis, and perhaps the Germans as well (though since they don’t charge fees, I suspect they may hit an upper limit soon).  But universities elsewhere won’t do too badly: they may simply change their offering and compete in different ways

Former Saudi oil minister Sheik Yamani once said: “The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”  It’s the same with international higher education: the era will end when demand slackens, not when we run into some issues in the supply.  And while there are imaginable scenarios where demand slackens in places like China (a full-on return to the Cultural Revolution, for instance), they still don’t seem all that likely – yet.

So roll on, Era of Internationalization.  There’s life in you for a few more years yet.