The changing face of higher education

The recent report of a Hong Kong couple transferring US$2 million to a so-called educational consultant in an attempt to get their children into Harvard might inspire bemusement or schadenfreude but also perhaps some rueful understanding from Asian parents for whom an elite foreign university education is considered a highly desirable addition to their children's pedigree.

Hong Kong has long sent students overseas, but the cachet now associated with a foreign - and increasingly, American - university degree is a relatively recent and not entirely obvious development. It was not all that long ago that a degree from an elite domestic university - an école normale supérieure, perhaps, or University of Tokyo - was required for a top job in government or industry. Education was local and a foreign degree could be taken as a sign that the possessor couldn't hack it at most competitive schools at home.

Yet American university campuses reveal a striking change. The number of Chinese undergraduates in the US rose 43 per cent last year and tripled in three years to 40,000. And that doesn't include Indians, Koreans and an increasing number of Europeans and Latin Americans.

While foreign graduate students have long been common on US campuses, significant numbers of foreign under-graduates is new, due only in part to rising affluence. Elite national universities seem to have lost their lock on the domestic job market and a foreign degree is considered by many a status symbol and, in a perhaps self-fulfilling feedback loop, a ticket to a better life. We are seeing the globalisation of higher education.

Universities are often keen to have foreign students. One reason is financial; another is that the student body might improve, both academically as well as in diversity. But this globalisation is also not without its potential downside.

Who, in the end, are universities for? For themselves, to some extent: to become the best possible. For their students, obviously: to provide the best education and opportunities for those enrolled. But universities also form part, usually a subsidised part, of the societies that nurture them. Large numbers of foreign students are not necessarily entirely compatible with this relationship.

Global aspirations and institutional objectives are not identical to national ones. When foreign students were rare - as they were even relatively recently - the various potential contradictions in everything from curriculums and academic standards to financial support were largely hypothetical; they may not remain so for much longer.