Has boom in overseas education served purpose?

Higher education is widely considered as another area of business in many countries today. Universities are supposed to attract fee-paying students, both local and foreign, so that they can be at least partly independent of government support.

Universities that attract foreign students or have established successful off-shore campuses are considered successful and are praised by governments. Yet, several decades back, the role of the universities was perceived quite differently. They were expected to contribute to national development not just by promoting research and academic excellence but by providing knowledge and skills to younger people.

Universities were expected to undertake cutting edge research in diverse fields and promote innovations and new product development. This was true for both developed as well as developing countries, even though the universities in the developed world with more material resources and expertise could perform the above tasks more effectively than their counterparts in the developing countries.

What is also noteworthy is that developed countries offered considerable financial support to students from developing countries to study at well-equipped universities. This was often considered as an essential part of technology transfer under international development cooperation.

Economic liberalisation that has taken place under the influence of neo-liberal reforms over the last several decades has changed the above state of affairs quite significantly. Countries that embraced neo-liberal economic and social reforms in the developed as well as the developing world began to treat hitherto publicly financed social sector services such as health and education as business activities that can be undertaken as much  by private entrepreneurs as the state.

With the relaxation of exchange control regulations and travel restrictions following economic liberalisation, students with financial resources in developing countries were able to travel overseas to pursue higher studies. Today, thousands of students from countries like China and India study in developed western countries.
 Universities in the developed west have benefitted enormously from the rapidly increasing numbers of foreign students who pay for their education at these institutions. These universities in turn have invested a major part of their revenue to develop university infrastructure, making them even more attractive.

While they continue to attract more and more students, improved facilities there have also benefitted often subsidised local students. On the other hand, the attractiveness of the above universities has not been entirely due to the higher quality of education they impart. Many students from developing countries have increasingly tended to treat a good university qualification as a way of securing employment and settling down in the host country.

The developments outlined above point to an enormous expansion of university education worldwide, driven mostly by market forces. Not many countries have paid much attention to either the issue of long term sustainability or the wider social impact of market driven expansion of universities. For instance, the largest numbers of overseas students in many developed countries originate from China and India. Both these countries have the capacity to build on their existing universities and even establish entirely new ones, as they have demonstrated in recent years, not just to stem the outflow of students but even to attract students from other countries.  With increasing employment opportunities for highly qualified professionals there, universities in both China and India are likely to attract more and more local students.

Increasing numbers of university graduates have not been matched by a corresponding expansion of employment opportunities for the products of expanding universities. So, graduate unemployment /underemployment continues to grow as a major issue in many countries, even in the developed world. Most of the courses that are on offer are focused on service industries such as business management, hospitality, trade, ICT, and finance. But, many developing countries need professionals who can contribute to the development of science, industries and agriculture, in addition to improving services and public administration. Yet, the market driven expansion of university education in both the developed and developing countries has not contributed much to the development of human resources in these areas.

Another major issue that has arisen as part of expanding mass higher education is the continuing brain drain from developing to the developed countries.  Yet, such mobility along the north- south axis continues to be mostly a one way process and continues to deplete the already small pool of highly skilled professionals, in particular, scientific workers in the developing countries like Sri Lanka.

Yet, no developed country today is in a mood to look at this critical issue from the point of view of international development cooperation, as the dominant tendency is to view international relations in trade and security terms. On the other hand, not many developing country governments are in a position to take effective measures to address the issue, because the public investments required to turn their education systems around are much higher than what they are willing to set aside for the sector. This is particularly so due to the fact that the measures that need to be taken are not effective unless they are taken in concert with corresponding measures in other areas.For instance, what is required is not just higher investments in education but also greater emphasis on science and technology, besides rational planning and management in education and other related sectors.

All these are too much to ask for in many developing countries where the powers that be are very clear about their priorities; what they should do to win popular support at the next national elections. This is particularly so when the dominant public discourse, guided by vested interests, is focused on day- -to-day issues almost at the expense of longer term challenges of development and socio-political stability.