Global Trends in Student Mobility

Introduction

Global student mobility has played a role in universities from their beginnings, and the movement of students, scholars, and knowledge has shaped the higher education landscape worldwide. It was foreign students in Bologna who banded together in 1088 to hire faculty to teach them, thereby forming the world’s first university (Ruegg 1992). In modern times, student mobility has accelerated quickly. In the twenty-first century, the number of higher education students studying outside their home countries nearly doubled from 2.1 million students in 2001 to 4.1 million students in 2016 (UNESCO 2017). Many factors account for the fast pace of this growth, including expanding middle classes in countries around the world and the demand for a world-class education, the increasing value of international education in the global workforce, and strategic efforts by governments to bolster both their economies and soft power through international efforts. At the institutional level,...