http://blog.universitiesuk.ac.uk/2012/04/12/goingdutchfacts/ We are the representative organisation for the UK’s universities Sat, 18 May 2013 21:45:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://blog.universitiesuk.ac.uk/2012/04/12/goingdutchfacts/#comment-510 Nic Mitchell Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:43:31 +0000 http://blog.universitiesuk.ac.uk/?p=613#comment-510 Of course, it is great that the UK’s universities can attract so many students from around EU countries and worldwide.
But shouldn’t we also be doing much, much more to encourage greater numbers of British students to study abroad.
I don’t want to get too involved with the media coverage of Maastricht University’s efforts, but at least they are trying to balance things a bit by encouraging UK undergraduates to go to Dutch universities.
Too often, it seems, the UK sees ‘internationalisation’ as people coming to our shores – when it should work both ways to be really effective.
I’m glad you say you want to encourage this, but where’s the evidence of real action on the ground to back up the warm words from the British Academy and Vince Cable.
Personally, I think there may be more chance of doing this at postgraduate-level, especially as an increasing number of European universities offer international Master’s degrees taught in English.
But when I’ve spoken to UK universities about whether they would back such efforts, they tell me they need to concentrate their efforts on attracting the best postgraduate students to their own courses.
And UK students I’ve spoken to for a research project into student mobility to Scandinavian universities seem unaware of the opportunities to do a Master’s taught in English in countries like Sweden where tuition is free for all EU citizens. So, there’s a bit of awareness-raising still to be done.

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