University Rankings and International Student Mobility: Chinese and Japanese Students in British Universities

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. Immigration and International Education

Abstract

In this paper we use aggregate level data from 206 British universities to investigate the role of university rankings and prestige in shaping international student mobility. Empirically, we focus our analysis on the changes over time in the stock of students from two major sending countries in Asia: China and Japan. These two flows are different with respect to their timing (with Japanese being a traditional flow and Chinese a more recent one) and intensity (the importance of the Chinese flow is rapidly growing while the number of Japanese students is decreasing over time), which provides an interesting research setting. Specifically, we use Higher Education Statistical Agency data to reconstruct the stock of students from China and Japan in Britain in four moments of time (2003, 2006, 2011 and 2014). For predictors, in addition to our main variables of interest, university rankings and prestige, we use a number of university characteristics from the European Tertiary Education Register including percentage of income coming from tuition fees, proportion of research funds coming from international funding bodies, and expenditures on student facilities. Our preliminary results suggest that university prestige (a consolidated “value” over the years in contrast to university’s changing place in ranking tables) is a significant factor shaping international student numbers (for both groups of students in our study). Surprisingly, other factors generally pointed as magnets for international students, such as changes in ranking tables, the degree of internationalization in other dimensions, and income from tuition fees appear to be less relevant than it is generally expected. Overall our findings point to the rather diffuse and symbolic functioning of world rankings, and international student mobility being driven by and sustained through this diffuseness.

Authors

• Yasemin Soysal, University of Essex

• Roxana Diana Baltaru, University of Essex

• Hector Cebolla-Boado, UNED