Migration Policy Institute: International Student Mobility: A Post-Pandemic Reset or a Broader Challenge?

International students have been in the news in ways that will not make it easy for U.S. universities to attract students from other nations.  

A new report from the Migration Policy Institute’s Transatlantic Council on Migration examines this crossroads at which policymakers find themselves—juggling the tensions between rising demand for international education, the financial imperatives of maintaining or growing international student admissions and the challenging politics of international migration. The report, by MPI Global Fellow Elizabeth Collett, details the balancing act that governments will have to perform between their immigration, education and workforce development objectives, before concluding with thoughts on aligning policies with future labor market needs.

The report, International Student Mobility: A Post-Pandemic Reset or a Broader Challenge?, makes clear that managing future demand in international education will involve potentially leveraging one or both of the following routes and sets of tools:

• Using immigration policy to shape intake demand, manage access to the labor market and permanent stay, and address concerns around the quality and integrity of education, while minimizing local impacts.
• Leaning into emerging trends in transnational learning and meeting the demand for international education without the need to move, while leaving open the possibility of later migration for work.

KJ