Before COVID-19 struck, around five million students were undertaking degrees outside their home country. Travel restrictions and social isolation measures have and will continue to reduce these numbers dramatically.
The first impacts occurred when travel from China to Australia and New Zealand was blocked from 1 February, just weeks before the beginning of the academic year in those countries, resulting in tens of thousands of students being unable to commence their studies down under.
This pales in comparison with what we expect to happen over the next year, when in normal circumstances we would expect more than a million students to commence overseas studies. The scale of disruption will depend upon whether commencing students are able to travel in time to begin in the Northern Hemisphere in September or the Southern Hemisphere in July or March.
An obvious solution would be for students to commence their overseas studies online and then travel abroad when travel restrictions are lifted and on-campus study recommences. If programmes are being delivered online anyway and social isolation is in place in the destination country, it makes sense to study online from home where costs are lower. Some international students who were already studying abroad have returned home for this reason.
But how likely are students to undertake international degrees online if they can’t travel abroad? At present, students who are not able to travel are faced with three options – begin their overseas programme online, defer commencement until overseas on-campus study is possible or opt instead for a local study option.
-The history of cross-border online degrees-
A recent survey of 6,900 students by IDP Education found that, of those who had received an offer of a place in an overseas university, less than a third of students (31%) would be willing to start their course online and move to face-to-face learning at a later date.
Most would instead defer their commencement until on-campus study is possible. Those who would not consider starting online expressed concerns about missing the chance for international exposure (69%) and the standard of online teaching (47%).
This may be disappointing for those of us who teach online, but it is not really surprising, considering the history of cross-border online degrees. Although distance education has grown in scale and sophistication all over the world, very few students actually enrol in online degrees offered by universities based outside their home country.
The vast majority of ‘transnational students’ (located in one country but enrolled in an institution based in another country) attend either an international branch campus or a campus of a local institution that partners with the foreign degree provider. There are perhaps a million students around the world studying in this way, most commonly with United Kingdom, United States and Australian universities.
Repeated efforts over the past two decades to launch fully online degrees across borders have floundered.
One of the main reasons for this is a prejudice against online learning from international students, who seek much more from their investment in a study experience. The COVID-19 crisis has forced educators and students the world over to confront these prejudices, and the resulting forced adoption of digital learning solutions is likely to precipitate a step change in the use of educational technology everywhere.
Students all over the world are reconsidering their preconceptions about online study, sometimes being pleasantly surprised. But online learning puts more strain on international students, who are already dealing with the additional challenges of transitioning to new social and educational settings, adjusting to culture shock and developing language confidence.
Governments, too, are often prejudiced against international online study and many, including China and India, the places from which the largest numbers of mobile students come, refuse to recognise foreign online degrees, citing concerns about fake institutions, fake qualifications and poor-quality provision. Even as those countries have promoted domestic online provision in recent years, they have maintained an opposition to recognising foreign programmes, seemingly for both protectionist and ideological reasons.
For instance, in response to a flood of enquiries from students and universities, the China Service Center for Scholarly Exchange advised in April that online courses taken due to the inability to attend campus will not influence the verification of foreign qualifications. While a sensible concession in the circumstances, this is hardly a vote of confidence in online learning. The situation in some other countries remains much less clear. ♦
*Christopher Ziguras wrote this article for the International Council for Open and Distance Education’s blog. He is professor of global studies at RMIT University, Australia.
