The global higher education market is expanding at a fast and furious rate but universities in Hong Kong and elsewhere will have to adapt constantly to gain and maintain their share of it.
A Hong Kong delegation to an international conference organised by the British Council in Edinburgh, Scotland, was told that the drive to achieve knowledge economies had left traditional market leaders, the US, Britain and Australia, looking over their shoulders at new competition in Asia.
Addressing the conference, Going Global2, Sir John Daniel, president and chief executive officer of Commonwealth of Learning, Canada, said: 'The numbers are exploding as the expansion of tertiary education becomes a major route to developed status. A forecast of 120 million students by 2020 may be reached by 2010.'
China now had more tertiary students than the US and India was coming up fast in the rear view mirror. With demand outstripping the growth in capacity in many developing countries, the market for international students would continue to grow.
Student mobility had nearly tripled since 1980 and doubled since 1998, with about 2.4 million students studying abroad in 2004.
The conference was told that to meet capacity, developing countries were rapidly expanding university places and international collaborations, and establishing joint academic programmes, promoting student exchanges, undertaking joint research projects and allowing foreign universities to set up joint or independent campuses.