The Headlines
The hidden benefits of international education
A new report from HEPI reminds educators that the benefits of international students goes well beyond pounds and pence.
By John O’Leary
Virtually all the debate surrounding international students in the UK and other host countries has been about finances – the amount they bring in through high fees weighed against their contribution to controversially high immigration figures. But new research by the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has offered a timely reminder of the long-term benefits international students may bring.
The institute’s Soft Power Index has been tracing the alma maters of world leaders - defined as monarchs, presidents and prime ministers – since 2017. Naturally, many are educated in their own country, but over the eight editions of the index, almost 40 percent of the 195 United Nations member states included in the research have had at least one senior leader who studied in the UK alone.
Soft power – a term coined by Joseph Nye to mean “a nation’s ability to achieve its objectives through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion” – has been recognised as increasingly important in recent years. Consequently, there are now a number of different ways of measuring it, from Brand Finance’s influential Global Soft Power Index to the International Monetary Fund’s New Global Index, which surprised observers last month by placing South Korea top. Both of these rankings use a variety of indicators, such as foreign investment, cultural exports and digital capabilities. But there is no denying that, as long as they enjoyed the experience, hosting a future leader during their formative years at university should be an invaluable investment.
"The number of world leaders educated in other countries is a useful proxy for the amount of soft power held by different countries."
HEPI’s introduction to its new index argues: “The number of world leaders educated in other countries is a useful proxy for the amount of soft power held by different countries. However, the Soft-Power Index is only one measure and it should be supplemented with other information when trying to determine which countries have been most successful at welcoming international students at any point in time.”
As it has for the last seven years, the index placed the United States top, with 70 serving world leaders having received higher education there. That was five more than last year and 12 more than in the UK, which headed the first index but has trailed the US ever since. Both remained well ahead of third-placed France, which had educated 28 world leaders, and Russia whose total was 10. Australia, Belgium and Spain tied for fifth place, having educated seven senior world leaders apiece. Germany, Italy, Switzerland have educated six world leaders each, while the Netherlands has educated five.
Additions to the ranks of UK-educated world leaders in the latest edition included Finland’s new president, Alexander Stubb, who studied at the London School of Economics; Sylvania Burton, the first female president of Dominica, who was a postgraduate at Manchester University; and Mohamed Muizzu, now president of the Maldives, who has a PhD in civil engineering from Leeds University. However, it lost Cambridge and LSE alumna Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, who abdicated earlier this year, and Hage Geingob, the former resident of Namibia, who studied at Leeds and died in office in February.
Some world leaders have studied in more than one foreign country. Luc Frieden, the new Prime Minister of Luxembourg, for example, studied law at Queen’s College, Cambridge, in the 1980s but also attended universities in France and the US.
The 2024 edition shows the largest-ever gap between the US and UK. Nick Hillman, the Director of HEPI, says: “As a firm believer in the benefits of studying abroad, I am sorry to see the UK’s relative position slip – and for the sixth time since we began calculating the numbers seven years ago.
“What could once have been excused as a blip is now a very clear trend. International students bring all sorts of financial, educational and social benefits to the UK but the constant flux in policy, such as the tighter rules introduced in January 2024, has confused people about whether the UK is truly welcoming.”
The British Council, which has been the UK’s lead agency for the promotion of educational and cultural exchange for 90 years, published its own international comparison of soft power activities earlier in the year. It found that funding for such activities was declining in many Western countries, including the UK, but increasing in China and Russia, as well as in France, Spain and Portugal. The authors of Soft Power at a Turning Point, reported that in general, policies and programmes were more explicitly related to foreign policy priorities and national interests than in the past, with ‘soft power’ increasingly linked to economic goals. “While it is hard to come to firm conclusions, there does seem to be a potentially concerning overall picture from the data we have, of reductions in the West at the same time as possible increases in autocratic competitors.”
China, which moved up to third in Brand Finance’s latest Global Soft Power Index, has prioritised soft power in its foreign policy over recent years, with the CCP taking the lead. It overtook Japan and Germany this year to reach its highest-ever position.
In the UK, hopes for a recovery in the funding for soft power activities and for universities in general were pinned on the October 30 Budget. Although the Chancellor’s hour-long speech made no mention of universities, there was some extra support for research and a subsequent announcement that fees for UK students will rise for the first time in eight years. The next opportunity for broader relief from growing financial pressures will come with a spending review planned for next Spring.
Evie Aspinall, Director of British Foreign Policy Group, acknowledged in a pre-Budget blog post that it was hard for politicians to justify spending money on international and cultural activities when there are so many pressing issues to tackle at home. But she added: “The UK’s soft power has been built up over hundreds of years. It’s hard won but easily lost and while we need to be hard-nosed about the reality of the UK’s economic position, we must not lose sight of the importance of the institutions that help define who the UK is, and how it is perceived in the world.”