Projects per year
Abstract
This paper aims to stimulate the nascent research agenda on the environmental sustainability of the ongoing mushrooming of international student mobility (ISM). The higher education (HE) system in the UK and elsewhere is increasingly predicated upon the hosting of international students. Whilst this drive towards internationalisation undoubtably has multiple benefits, little attention thus far has been paid to its potentially very considerable environmental impact. The drive for internationalisation within HE thus potentially sits at odds with ambitions and strategies to promote sustainability within the sector and beyond.
In-depth interviews with 21 students and representatives of 14 university international offices offer insights into how the environment features in the decisions that young people and HE institutions make with regards to partaking in and promoting education-related mobility.
The results find that students take environmental considerations into account when undertaking education-related mobility, but these aspirations are often secondary to logistical issues concerning the financial cost and longer travel times associated with greener travel options. At the institutional scale, vociferously championed university sustainability agendas have yet to be reconciled with the financial imperative to recruit evermore international students.
This paper identifies a thus far neglected contradiction within HE whereby the sustainability agenda that it so rightly espouses is potentially undermined by the drive towards internationalisation. The paper uses the anthropause concept to consider the future environmental sustainability of ISM.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1561-1575 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education |
Volume | 24 |
Issue number | 7 |
Early online date | 31 Mar 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 13 Nov 2023 |
Keywords
- Anthropause
- Environmental sustainability
- Higher education
- International student mobility
- Internationalisation
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Internationalisation, sustainability and the contested environmental impacts of international student mobility'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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CPC III (Transition Funding): Centre for Population Change (Transition funding)
Kulu, H. (PI), Finney, N. (CoI), Graham, E. (CoI), Keenan, K. L. (CoI) & McCollum, D. (CoI)
Economic & Social Research Council
1/04/19 → 31/03/22
Project: Standard