Tag: HEPIs

  • Thinking about the support of Chinese students: a response to HEPI’s recent report

    Thinking about the support of Chinese students: a response to HEPI’s recent report

    In December 2024, HEPI and Uoffer Global published How can UK universities improve their strategies for tackling integration challenges among Chinese students? by Pippa Ebel. In this blog, academics at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester give their thoughts on the report. Beneath that, Pippa Ebel has provided her response.

    • By Dr Paul Vincent Smith, Lecturer in Education; Dr Alex Baratta, Reader in Language & Education; Dr Heather Cockayne, Lecturer in International Education; and Dr Rui He, Lecturer in Education, who are all at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester.

    The HEPI and Uoffer Global report How can UK universities improve their strategies for tackling integration challenges among Chinese students?, by Pippa Ebel, provides a series of ideas for supporting Chinese students. This clear and succinct report left us wanting more detail on some of its conclusions. However, we also noted that the report’s focus on integration is one that has been problematised in recent publications. In this response, we suggest some contrasting perspectives on the support of Chinese students for the purposes of further discussion.

    Generalising along national lines

    The framing of the report along the lines of national identity unavoidably makes for a broad-brush approach. We suspect Ebel would agree with us when we suggest that we cannot assume Chinese students will have uniform ambitions and desires. Although the structural conditions under which students are recruited must be taken into account (see ‘Admissions’ below), there is an increasing recognition of students as independent agents, capable of making their own choices, rather than being passive vessels of their national culture.

    Further, there are other student characteristics to bear in mind. For example, we suggest that the distinction between undergraduate and postgraduate student experiences should be reflected in how students are offered support. At the University of Manchester, international students comprise around one-third of the student body; at the taught postgraduate level, it is more than half. Many of these are students from China. When considering educational level alone, then, there are likely to be differences between students who will spend three years in a setting of student diversity, and those who will spend a calendar year in the UK, predominantly among compatriots.  

    What do students really need universities to do?

    The report suggests that ‘Most Chinese students would like more digital support from their institutions’ (p. 41), with the report tending to focus on social media. Yet (p. 27) 60% of Chinese learners are nonetheless described as using Whatsapp and Instagram; they simply have a preference for the continued use of equivalent Chinese platforms.

    We infer from the report the idea that Chinese students are missing out by not using ‘our’ platforms. It is suggested (p. 41) that Chinese students could be involved in marketing decisions on whether to use Western or Chinese platforms for social media messaging. This would have the advantage of directly involving Chinese students. It begs the question, though, of whether time is better spent on choosing the best platform for a given purpose, or on establishing a broad social media presence to maximise coverage.

    Our experience suggests that students find their domestic digital ecosystem enabling in a UK context. It also suggests that there might be some question of validity when it comes to the report findings. Is this a case of higher education researchers asking: ‘Would you like more support?’, and the students understandably answering ‘yes’?

    Admissions to UK universities

    The report has much to say on how Chinese students are admitted to UK universities. The ‘ethnic clustering’ addressed in the report is an index of how the university sector is organised and how universities generate income. Several of UK universities recruit thousands of Chinese students annually. It is well documented that many students will base their choices on university standings, purposefully selecting universities that are in the top 100 of world rankings. In this context, there is a limit to what agents who are charged with ‘promoting under-subscribed courses’ (p. 40) could achieve.

    The use of AI-supported interviews to further test applicants’ spoken English is again thought-provoking, but requires more discussion. This practice seems to be an invitation for universities to spend money on additional admissions arrangements, in order to reduce income by rejecting students who, while they may have otherwise met the formal language criteria for admission, fall foul of new spoken English tests, the requirements of which are in their formative stages.

    Institutional responses to proficiency in English

    The report takes a particular position on the English proficiency of Chinese students. We agree that universities and their staff must be able to invoke standards of language for purposes including admissions and assessment. As teaching staff, though, we find that there are many steps to traverse before we conclude that any particular student behaviour can be attributed to linguistic proficiency.  Have we met the students on their own terms, and found out about them as learners? Before we insist on invoking linguistic standards, are we satisfied that there are no better explanations for (e.g.) classroom silence? The issue of classroom passivity is not one specific to international students, although it seems that the wider issue is being put to one side in favour of a focus on some international students.

    Not least among these matters is that of how China English is manifested in student academic writing. In many cases, the language used in student texts is highly systematic and obeys the rules of a fully-fledged language. There is a need to raise awareness of these features. With regard to spoken language, perceived proficiency is not always about the grasp of the language itself, but can also be associated with the spaces students are working in. Lack of confidence (as noted on p. 16 of the report), mental health, sense of belonging, and divisive university-level language policies may all have an impact.   

    The discussion of IELTS in the report is notable for what it omits. Is it the case that universities are putting IELTS to a purpose it is not fit for; or that universities think of IELTS as a guarantee of proficiency rather than a time-and-space-constrained test result for which universities themselves, along with UKVI, have set the standards for success? We welcome the contribution of the report on this point, and we would be interested to read more on the author’s broader perspective and recommendations on IELTS.   

    Integrating or including?  

    Chinese students remain the largest international group on UK campuses, attracting ongoing attention from higher education policy-makers and practitioners. Nonetheless, where we see a focus on a single group, we need to ask how universities can manage their support without falling into the trap of re-hashing existing deficit narratives. Work on internationalisation in universities has suggested that ‘practice[s] with the most demonstrable impact on students’ include embedding internationalisation holistically across the institution, and encouraging inclusion – as opposed to integration, which is not always well-conceptualised. There is a balance to be struck between the economy of generalising according to background, and providing local, co-constructed spaces for students as independent agents to meet their own needs.

    I have been pleasantly surprised by the degree and depth of feedback received in response to my report published at the end of last year. It is always better to have engagement of any kind than none at all. Two threads of response have been most striking: the first by management teams of universities and education organisations wanting to better understand the report and how to apply it to their own strategies. Secondly, by Chinese students themselves on platforms like Little Red Book, with whom the report has thankfully resonated and prompted further discussion and exchange. Both are incredibly heartening. Yet as expected, responses have not all been glowing, and I am particularly grateful for the response issued by academics at the University of Manchester which critically addresses several points. It reflects in a nuanced way on my arguments and contributes valuable questions.

    I hope to add the following reflections in order to continue the dialogue on the report, as well as acknowledge the time and effort they put into forming a response.

    The value of identifying patterns & trends within a single ethnic group

    As suggested, I recognise that Chinese students do not have ‘uniform ambitions or desires’. My extensive conversations with Chinese students from a range of backgrounds have shown me how personal and individual every university experience is. However, in a report focusing exclusively on one group – partly chosen for the fact it represents the second largest international student group in the UK – a principle aim is to extract trends and patterns which can be useful in promoting better understanding and empathy. My report does not make statements such as ‘the Chinese student experience is X’ or ‘all Chinese students think…’, instead it focuses on which challenges were most consistent among a diverse group of Chinese respondents. It is important, for instance, for universities to understand that probably their entire Chinese student body uses WeChat, and how this cultural phenomenon might shape their digital behaviour on campus.

    A more detailed explanation of divergent social media usage

    My report is in fact entirely in agreement with the respondents in finding that China’s own social media platforms – such as Little Red Book – are enabling when transposed to a UK context, providing key information about the locality (for instance, hospital services and banks).

    The report does not ask whether Chinese students should continue to use their own software, or switch to a local one. Rather, it investigates the habits and preferences of Chinese students in the UK, in order to raise awareness of differences with other local and international students. How universities choose to engage with this information is an open question, but it raises the point that if universities wish to improve communication channels with Chinese students they must first understand which platforms are being used, and how.

    Promoting undersubscribed courses, not institutions

    The respondents rightly observed that the preference of UK institutions among Chinese students is the result of an emphasis on rankings, leading to a preference for the top 100 institutions. However, the respondents misunderstood my assertion that agents should promote ‘less well-known courses’ to mean they should promote a broader range of universities. Since agents often work on behalf of universities, this would clearly not be a realistic suggestion, as they would not be incentivised to promote an institution that was not their client.

    My suggestion was to help agents promote different courses which are less well-known and undersubscribed among international students. Furthermore, it was to encourage universities to maintain closer dialogue with their agents to better communicate their needs (and gaps), as well as to receive useful information from agents who are in daily conversation with prospective students. During a conversation with a senior faculty member from a UK institution with a meaningful agent network in China, the complaint was raised that the more niche or newer courses in science have surprisingly few Chinese students. Whilst this is a single anecdote, it was consistent with prior findings. Chinese students veer towards courses which are actively promoted, or undertaken by fellow students in their network: Business, Engineering, Marketing… This means that more niche, but perhaps highly suitable courses are overlooked. Do prospective students, for instance, know that Bristol has 16 courses related to Economics, or might they presume quite reasonably that there is just one?

    Language challenges, explained

    The respondents thoughtfully add to my point on language challenges of Chinese students by highlighting the differences in the education systems of China and the UK. These are indeed pertinent and have been written about at length (one reason why I chose not to focus on this area). My interviews with students indeed reflected surprise with the academic environment at UK institutions, which promoted a form of debate and discussion they were unused to. This aspect, however, doesn’t contradict the argument of Chinese students being underconfident in expressing themselves in English, but adds another dimension in explaining their underconfidence within a classroom setting.

    The response asks for further clarity on my assessment of IELTS as a suitable language evaluation tool. As stated, I believe that IELTS is too heavily relied on as a tool for understanding a student’s overall language ability and their suitability to enrol in a course. Whilst IELTS provides an indication of level, it is incomplete and as Manchester points out ‘a time-and-space constrained test’. The report suggests that universities consider additional methods of evaluation, for instance online or pre-recorded interviews, in order to gain a more holistic and accurate perspective. In a world where AI is proving increasingly central to our lives, universities might benefit from investment into AI tools which could elevate and enhance their recruitment processes.

    (Hopefully not) a final word

    My report does not assume that students should or must integrate. Rather it questions assumptions around the degree to which Chinese students wish to engage with their institution (particularly socially), and highlights distinct facets of the Chinese experience which may be less well known by institutions and non-Chinese students.

    I do not personally see the term ‘integration’ as problematic. I interpret it to mean engaging with and understanding a local context, not compromising one’s own unique identity and background to fit in. I commend the respondents’ use of the term ‘inclusion’ and agree we should all be aspiring towards a more inclusive environment on campuses. However, I assert that in order to make an environment more inclusive, it is first necessary to raise awareness and understanding of the individuals we are attempting to include. Without this understanding, how do we know what inclusive looks like?

    Awareness of the unique and precise challenges international students face – Chinese or otherwise – is the first step to actually making them feel included. It is not showcasing a range of faces on the front page of a brochure, or hosting Chinese calligraphy workshops on campus. It is creating structural opportunities in which students can give feedback and embedding representative voices of these different groups within the institution at diverse levels, be it the students’ union, alumni office or governing board.

    I welcome any additional points, and again reiterate my thanks for a thoughtful response to my original report.

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  • Looking back at HEPI’s most controversial reports – including an unexpected one from 2024

    Looking back at HEPI’s most controversial reports – including an unexpected one from 2024

    HEPI Director, Nick Hillman, starts 2025 by looking back at some HEPI controversies from the last decade.

    New Year’s Day marked the first day of my twelfth year at HEPI. Over that time, I’ve had a hand in publishing (and writing) over 200 reports. None has stoked controversy for the sake of it, but neither have we shied away from publishing things that people feel need to be said even if they might be deemed by some to be controversial.

    Fortunately, just four (that’s under 2%) of these pieces have flared into major rows. That’s about one report every three years or so on average, which doesn’t feel too bad a record for think-tank land. If we were in the business of stoking controversy for the sake of it, then it would be fair to say we are not very good at it.

    Most people understand the role of think tanks is to make people think, whether they agree with them or not. Indeed, HEPI was founded as an offshoot of HEFCE in the early 2000s because it was felt there were things that should be said but which an official arms-length body could not easily say, with the overarching goal of speeding up the policymaking process

    Some reports we were initially a little nervous about putting out have been accepted at face value without getting anyone too hot under the collar. (A recent one of this ilk looked at the experience of trans and non-binary students.) But more intriguingly, those HEPI reports that have been deemed controversial have not generally been the ones I thought in advance would be.

    And each one is now seared on my mind.

    A UKIP Licence

    The first of these, published back in 2015, proposed a National Licence to give everyone with a UK Internet Protocol address access at no upfront charge to past and present academic research. The associated backend costs were designed to be covered by government payments to publishers.

    FE lecturers and some health professionals welcomed the idea wholeheartedly, as they tended to think better access to the latest and past research would help them do their jobs. However, the more headbanger-ish element of the open-access world thought it outrageous that free access might be limited, at least initially, only to those in the UK. They also disliked the fact that publishers would continue to receive material payments.

    As you would have needed a UK IP address to benefit from the National Licence and as the UK Independence Party was then riding high, the critics amusingly caricatured the paper as a ‘UKIP’ idea. Less amusingly, one academic called for it to be withdrawn, only to rescind this when it was suggested that this might be illiberal – before changing his mind once more and calling again for a ban.

    The paper is still available but the National Licence idea has not made any progress and the major challenge of poor access to academic output for those without institutional log-ins (including policymakers, not to mention think-tank staff…) remains. 

    Boys to Men

    The second controversial piece – produced in 2016 – was on the education of boys, who fall far behind girls in our education system. This, sadly, also remains a big problem that no government has gripped (though it’s not too late for the current Government to do so). Our paper was condemned, for example by the then leadership of the National Union of Students (NUS), for emphasising sex rather than class.

    At the time, I said the report seemed to have been treated like an embarrassing relative who sits in the corner at family gatherings spouting politically incorrect nonsense.

    In response to such condemnation, we pointed out that it is possible to be worried about more than one issue at a time and that, as disadvantaged girls tend to do a little better than disadvantaged boys, sex seems one important factor to consider alongside all the others when assessing outcomes.

    The challenges in this area are perhaps a little better understood these days than they were a few years ago – thanks to excellent work from people like Richard Reeves, a Brit who is now the President of the American Institute for Boys and Men and who has written an whole book on the topic and who recently spoke at a really good Bright Blue event on the issue). So when we return to the topic, as we would like to do early in 2025, perhaps it will be less fraught.

    Grammar schools for all

    The third row was predictable. It occurred six years ago, on the back of a HEPI piece by the right-of-centre policy wonk Iain Mansfield. He defended grammar schools and their impressive record in getting BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) pupils into the most selective universities, such as the University of Cambridge.

    This paper (like the one on the National Licence) appeared in HEPI’s Debate Paper series, which is more polemical in its approach than HEPI’s other papers, for we knew it might stoke a row. Yet after publication of Iain’s paper, which had gone through our regular peer-review process as with all full-length HEPI papers, one well-respected expert in the sociology of education working at a Russell Group university declared HEPI should ‘disband’.

    However, most of the opposition to Iain’s paper was classier. Unlike other – more ideological – think tanks, we invariably encourage people who disagree with something we have published to write for us too. So we encouraged the critics to gather together under two Oxford academics to produce a strong HEPI paper of their own that responded to Iain’s work in the form of a series of essays. 

    In their respective pieces, Iain and his critics were largely focusing on different issues – Iain looked mainly at access to selective higher education on leaving grammar school and the collection of essays concentrated mainly on how grammar school systems tend to work against the interests of those who are shut out from them. While the debate was angry in parts, it was properly evidence based and therefore very illuminating.

    As someone who lives in part of the country where nearly all children still take the 11+, I found the discussion usefully educational and took something from both sides. Iain as the initial protagonist and someone who thrives on intellectual debate certainly welcomed it.

    Helping postgraduate parents

    The row in 2024, in contrast, came as a complete surprise. It was prompted by a HEPI Policy Note on the lack of childcare support for parents who are early career researchers.

    The paper, written for HEPI by the GW4 group of universities in England and Wales, was based on the personal testimonies of postgraduate parents. It argued that postgraduate parents should become entitled to the same support that is available to undergraduate parents:

    the current approach does not provide the right incentives to support social mobility through education. Extending the current undergraduate Childcare Grant to postgraduate students would seem a logical first step to support the most economically disadvantaged.

    The paper also explained that the authors knew their proposals would not solve all the problems faced by postgraduate parents:

    While GW4 acknowledges that this would not be a panacea for all postgraduates, extending the support to those with the greatest need would be a welcome first step to ensure parity of policy.

    So the authors also floated going further:

    A future step such as expanding the 30 free hours, so that childcare does not continue to be a barrier to the reskilling and career progression opportunities that postgraduate studies can provide, is worthy of consideration if the ambitions of the R&D People and Culture Strategy are to be delivered.

    This seemed a relatively uncontroversial conclusion, not least because it was in tune with HEPI’s earlier uncontested work pointing out how postgraduate researchers often fall through the gap between student support and employee benefits. Moreover, all our other work on improving the lives of early career researchers had been widely welcomed; in 2024 alone, this included a collection of essays with the British Academy and a study of the career progression of Black early-career academics with the Society of Black Academics and GatenbySanderson.

    So we assumed that, if only we could secure engagement with its contents, then the HEPI / GW4 Policy Note calling for modest improvements in the support for postgraduate parents in England would also land on fertile soil. Yet the outcry from a small number of those who read it and who thought it did not go far enough was extraordinary.

    Playing the ball not the person

    The process for putting a paper of this sort together takes months and, during this time, we had lots of fascinating conversations about whether the proposals should be bolder, whether or not we should argue that England should simply and immediately copy the generous arrangements in Wales (even though Wales is better funded thanks to the Barnett formula) and which arm of the state should have responsibility for childcare support for postgraduates. The wording about better short-term arrangements only being a ‘first step’ reflected these discussions.

    Although the Policy Note was not my work, I used my social media channels to help publicise it and so drew much of the ire from academics on X / Twitter. Initially, I was asked why we wanted to block people from ‘feeding our families’. Later, and after I had pointed out this criticism seemed not to be based on a close reading of the actual paper, I was called ‘unhinged’ and accused of ‘misogyny’ and ‘everyday sexism’. One message about the report was tagged with ‘VAWG’, which I learnt stands for ‘violence against women and girls’. Remember, our paper proposed introducing – not restricting or abolishing – childcare support for postgraduate parents, and with a focus (initially) on the poorest ones most in need.

    Anyone serious about helping postgraduates should surely avoid the sort of attack that only serves to deter people from becoming involved in policymaking in the first place. At HEPI, we will always have the back of anyone who writes for us (irrespective of whether individual members of HEPI staff personally agree with them or not), but people are still bound to be put off if they find their peers prefer to play the person not the ball the minute they arrive on the pitch.

    Put simply, not everyone is able to respond to attacks in the wonderful way that the Cambridge academic Dr Ally Louks has been doing so effectively in recent weeks. Perhaps we could all learn something useful from her.

    Policymaking is hard…

    Successful policymaking is hard. It relies on lots of people putting their heads above the parapet to light a better way. HEPI wants to encourage debate across the whole range of higher education policy issues, but that needs a conducive environment in which to flourish. If we really are serious about producing a better environment for postgraduate students – and as our work consistently shows, HEPI certainly is – then we need a constant stream of new ideas, persuasive papers and open debate.

    At HEPI, we remain committed to encouraging a positive environment and, as a think tank publishing 35+ reports a year plus a daily blog, we rely on sourcing lots of good content, ideally from those at the coalface – and irrespective of whether they have written for policymakers before.

    So just as we have encouraged those who want to go further than we proposed in the GW4 / HEPI report on postgraduate parents to write an alternative piece for us (currently without success), we also encourage others to make it their New Year’s Resolution to write for HEPI. If you are even mildly tempted, our Instructions for Bloggers can be found here and our Instructions for Authors are here.

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