- The blog below on international education and the student experience was kindly authored by Marie Taillard, Dean of ESCP Business School’s London campus and L’Oréal Professor of Creativity Marketing.
The UK’s recent International Education Strategy sends an important signal that international education is being treated as an asset for growth, influence and long-term global partnerships. This shift away from an immigration-led lens is significant. However, the biggest impact of the strategy will not be seen in export targets or recruitment figures, but in the opportunities for sustainable international engagement with talented individuals. This will depend on how seriously institutions take ensuring that the students who come to the UK to study have a successful experience.
We need to be more precise in how we discuss the value of international students. Too often, the conversation focuses on mobility or the short-term economic benefit of student spending. If the UK is serious about maintaining its global competitiveness, a positive and rewarding experience for international students has to sit at the heart of institutional thinking. In simple words, long-term institutional value is created through exceptional student experience. Where this experience is weak, reputational, academic and economic value will eventually suffer. Where it is strong, particularly within internationally diverse cohorts, its impact grows over time.
International students as co-creators of the learning environment
International students are frequently discussed in operational terms: as fee payers, short-term spenders, or future ‘agents of influence’ once they return home. While these outcomes are undoubtedly important, they overlook a more immediate reality.
International students help to develop the multicultural mindset that benefits UK society and business. In business education, this is essential. They bring different educational backgrounds, professional experiences and ways of thinking into the classroom. That diversity changes how discussions unfold, how business problems are approached and how students learn from one another.
In addition, when international students work on projects with partner organisations, they bring insights shaped by different markets and cultural contexts. This is increasingly valuable for UK businesses operating internationally or exporting goods and services. International students can be an important asset to this system.
Experience, not exposure
The planned reduction of the post-study visa to 18 months raises a difficult but necessary question. How do we ensure that international students can still gain lasting value from a UK education within a shorter timeframe?
One response is to stop treating outcomes as something that happens after graduation and start embedding them within the learning experience itself. This requires closer collaboration with industry when programmes are designed. It also means giving students structured opportunities to work on real projects, engage with applied research and test ideas in entrepreneurial settings while they are studying.
In our case, as a UK-based charity with full UK degree-awarding powers, we take our responsibility to contribute to the UK economy seriously. Embedding consultancy projects, internships, and other forms of work-based learning into the curriculum provides these structured opportunities while actively supporting our local business and social communities.
There is a clear mutual benefit here. International students gain insight into the UK labour market and UK cultural and business practices, and practical experience that they can draw on later, whether they stay in the UK or not. At the same time, businesses benefit from access to highly skilled students who bring international perspectives and up-to-date knowledge. Within a shorter post-study window, this kind of integration becomes even more important.
Rethinking what ‘international experience’ really means
The strategy also points towards expanding the delivery of UK education beyond national borders. From experience, this can be both challenging and very rewarding. Multicampus models such as ours offer a particularly effective way of approaching international education.
Studying across several countries as part of a single programme exposes students to different regulatory systems, cultural and business practices and social contexts, while maintaining consistent academic standards. Learning in Paris, London, Berlin or Madrid, for example, allows students to see how ideas around markets, sustainability, technological innovation or governance play out differently across Europe. That understanding is hard to develop from one location alone.
This approach fits well with the strategy’s focus on transnational education and long-term partnerships, but it also reframes international education more fundamentally. It shifts the emphasis away from students travelling to a destination towards how they learn to operate across systems, adapt, and work with multiple perspectives. Employers increasingly look for that capability, regardless of where graduates eventually build their careers.
From strategy to reality
The International Education Strategy sets out an ambitious and largely welcome direction for the UK. It recognises education as part of a broader economic, cultural and diplomatic agenda. Whether it succeeds will depend on how far institutions are supported in focusing on depth and quality rather than volume, and on experience rather than simple exposure.
International education creates its greatest value when student experience is at the forefront of all your operations and decisions. When that happens, graduates remain connected to the UK not because of policy design, but because their education has influenced how they think and work. This is the kind of international education worth sustaining that will allow the UK to remain relevant in a competitive global landscape.