Beyond ‘export education’: aspiring to put students at the heart of a university’s internationalisation strategy

For many universities around the world, internationalisation means the recruitment of fee-paying international students (so-called export education) for primarily commercial reasons. For UK universities, international (non-European Union) students account for approximately 13% of their annual revenues, making them highly dependent on international student recruitment. This paper discusses the attempt by one UK university to change direction and develop a new approach to internationalisation which puts an international learning experience for all students at the heart of its new strategic plan. It discusses the obstacles to changing direction in this way and shares some of the lessons learned about how to roll out an alternative university-wide internationalisation strategy.