The Race Is On!

Governments across the world, especially in China and India, are paying large amounts of money into building and improving their universities and are spending millions more selling them abroad. Europe is unifying its fractured system to make it more appealing. Private universities are appearing where they never existed. The stakes in this very tightening race could not be higher: with the numbers of internationally-minded students growing exponentially, schools and nations must do all they can to lure them in for both economic and educational reasons. State funding for education is falling in many places, making fee-paying foreigners look better. The winners of the new global education race will be the countries that have institutions that are the most international at every level. They will boast at multicultural student bodies, elite foreign campuses, offer internationally recognized degrees and will teach in English, which is the global language of business, research and technology. For now, the US is the world leader with half of the spots in the top 100 universities. But the US also helped make the competition so fierce because after the 9/11 attacks, there was a widespread feeling that the US no longer accepted foreigners. In the 3 years that followed the 9/11 attacks, international student enrollment dropped by up to 2.4% a year. However, the US is coming back and providing higher education to foreign students generating more than $14 billion for US economy in tuition and living expenses alone. Americas share of the fast growing international students, more then 2.5 million people studying overseas, is shrinking. Among the top 6 host countries, the US is the weakest growing, pulling in 17%, while France pulls in 81% and Japan pulls in 108%
The best of the challengers are building up international programs with foreign outposts and joint degree programs. France's INSEAD business school allows students to move between its French campuses and its Singapore location. More schools are taking this approach. A report by the American Council on Education found that 131 private Indian colleges had links to foreign universities.
Many of Asia's institutions have also started offering degrees in English. In South Korea, Underwood International College, Korea University, and Ewha University all have recently created English-only undergraduate programs. In Japan and China, universities are increasing their English language course offerings. This is paying off because this is creating higher education in Asia. But throughout all of the changes, one thing has remained the same and that is the world's biggest name institutes are still everyone's first choice.

www.msnbc.com/id/20216602/site.newsweek/page/0/