QAA-funded project makes fundamental and far-reaching recommendations on approaches to international students

A QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project (CEP) has proposed a route "towards an ethical and expansive model of international student pedagogy".

Examining ways of supporting staff to enhance the international student experience, the project has proposed a set of principles designed to underpin this practice, and has published, as an audit toolkit to support this, a critical evaluation framework for resources, training and practice – as well as a guide for staff to small inclusive practices that support international students.

The CEP has been led by a team from De Montfort University, in partnership with colleagues from the University of Wolverhampton, the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Based on a series of workshops involving staff from all four institutions, the research highlights the fact that its participants consistently identified the ways in which institutions frame international students as financial assets rather than pedagogic partners: "The term 'cash cows' was used directly and repeatedly by staff who found the framing both accurate and deeply uncomfortable."

Their report notes: "The financial logic of recruitment shapes the conditions in which students arrive, the speed at which they are expected to integrate, the support made available to them, and the way their presence is communicated to academic staff. An institution that recruits students as a financial strategy and then tasks individual educators with the consequences of that strategy is producing a structural injustice, not a pedagogic problem."

The report goes on to observe that, while international students are persistently perceived as lacking English language proficiency, critical thinking skills and familiarity with UK academic conventions, the most significant deficit may not in fact lie with the students themselves: "It may lie with the staff member who lacks understanding of the student's educational history. It may lie with the institution that provides no or minimal dedicated professional development. It may lie with a curriculum that treats Eurocentric academic conventions as universal. It may lie with an assessment framework that was never designed with diverse or minoritised learners in mind."

The report therefore advances an urgent pedagogical and ethical imperative to reframe UK higher education's traditional international student deficit narrative, and, in order to address this, presents four interconnected lenses for examining both institutional provision and individual practice, seeing these issues through the positioning and construction of the international student, the epistemological centring of western academic conventions in curricula, a reflexive examination of the assumptions underpinning pedagogic practice, and an interrogation of the structural conditions that make inclusive practice impossible – including workload pressures, large class sizes, late arrivals, a lack of professional development and the financial logic of mass international student recruitment.

The report sets out for educators six key principles to promote ethical and effective practice in this area:

• Before you teach, recognise who is in the room as individuals with histories, knowledge, and perspectives, not as a category defined by fee status or visa type.
• When a student appears to struggle, ask where the deficit actually lies – honest diagnosis is the precondition for honest intervention.
• Act where you can, and name what constrains you: inclusive practice requires both individual commitment and institutional change.
• Centre the voices of international students: decisions about curriculum, pedagogy, and support should be informed by the actual experiences of the students they are intended to serve.
• The duty of care towards international students does not begin at induction: it begins when recruitment promises are made,
• See what international students bring rather than what they lack, and to build the structures that allow those contributions to be recognised and valued.

The authors argue: "When an institution recruits a student from overseas, taking significant fees, issuing a place that shapes that student's future and making promises about the education and experience they will receive, it incurs an obligation that goes well beyond logistics… What is required is sustained, resourced, and institutionally embedded commitment to the conditions in which international students can genuinely thrive."

Project lead Dr Sumeya Loonat has blogged about the project for Wonkhe and will be speaking about her work at the meeting of QAA's Executive Leaders (International) Networking Community on Thursday 5 November.

Our Global Insights members are also invited to register for our Global Insights Conference, which will take place online on 19-22 October 2026, and will focus on sustainable international student recruitment, transnational education at scale, opportunities for student mobility, student support during geopolitical crises, and futureproofing assessment in global online learning. The conference will include a session considering how we might define "high quality" in the context of international student recruitment, featuring Sanam Arora (Founder and Chair of the National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK), Charley Robinson (Head of Global Mobility Policy, Universities UK International) and Chris Chang (Deputy Vice-Chancellor Global Engagement & Student Life, University of Portsmouth). The conference will be opened by Education Insight's Dr Janet Ilieva, who will reflect on global trends in international higher education. Other confirmed speakers include Simon Bradbury (Pro Vice-Chancellor International, De Montfort University), Professor Margaret Topping (Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement, Queen’s University Belfast), Campbell Powrie (Deputy Registrar & Head of Student Life, Heriot-Watt University), Robyn Corcoran (Director of Partnerships, Vocational Qualifications and Quality, Open University), Catherine Bland (Head of Validation Partnerships and Operations, Open University), Professor Tenia Kyriazi (Deputy Director Teaching & Learning, Middlesex University Dubai), Shannon Stowers (Director of International Policy & Engagement, QAA), Jude Waites (Erasmus Student Network UK) and neuroscientists Dr Mark Kennedy and Dr Anja Harrison (King's College London).