Students – the migrants everyone wants

By Joris Ranchin and Cuauhtemoc Rebolledo-Gómez 
Staticians, Innovation and Measuring Progress Division 

International students are one of the fastest growing parts of the global education system. In just 20 years their numbers have more than doubled, and there are now over 4 million young people currently studying abroad to get their degree. Driven as much by a rise in tertiary education as by an increasingly globalised world, they are taking advantage of cheaper travel and communication costs to improve their language skills, get high-status qualifications – and give themselves a leg up in a competitive job market. But they’re not the only ones benefiting. The countries they are flocking to are cashing in while countries like China encourage their young people to travel abroad to study in order to bring their new skills home.

So who are these new students and where do they go? The latest edition of Education Indicators in Focus suggests that the global market in education is changing and that there’s increasing competition for these globetrotting young people.

Meet the international student
Your typical international student will be from Asia – most likely China, India or Korea, the top three countries of origin for foreign students. They are overwhelmingly likely to be studying in an OECD country, and preferably  an English-speaking one  – with the United States the number one destination, followed by the United Kingdom and Australia. They’ll probably be studying social sciences, business or the law, and increasingly they’ll be found at the very highest levels of education – one in five of those enrolled in advanced research programmes in the OECD are now international students, and more than one in four in some countries.

Price isn’t everything (but it helps)
With so much choice on offer, international students have to take many factors into account. A country’s reputation and the courses it offers matter – as does the cost. Fees have been rising, with the vast majority of countries charging their international students more than their domestic ones. High fees needn’t necessarily be a deterrent, especially if there are scholarships available or students can work to offset the cost. But at least some of America’s decline as a destination for international students may be due to high university fees, especially as a good quality degree is now on offer more cheaply elsewhere. Sweden is a prime example of this – after introducing tuition fees for students from outside Europe, it saw numbers plummet by more than half in a single year.

Language and laws are also key
There are other barriers – and bridges – to international students, the most important being language and immigration policies. Because English-speaking destinations are so popular, some non-English speaking countries have even taken to offering courses in English to attract more students. Some countries have changed their immigration laws to make it easier for students to come in, and to stay on once they’ve graduated – although others such as the United States and the United Kingdom are increasingly making it harder for international students to enter the country. As a result of these changes, some of the old certainties are changing. Destinations like Germany – and even the United States – are losing popularity, while new destinations – the Russian Federation, New Zealand, Korea – are rising fast.

A changing market in a changing world
Increasingly, international students are seen as an asset both for the countries and the institutions that host them. As well as their fees and their living expenses during the period of study – Canada, for instance, estimates that foreign students are a bigger earner than aluminium or aerospace – international students can benefit the economy long term if they stay on after their education. Patterns of travel reflect  broader migration patterns as students seek countries which already have ties with home, but they also reflect the way countries and institutions are competing to attract the brightest and the best. International students are changing themselves as they get experience of life abroad – but they’re also changing the world they live in.

For more information 
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit: http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2013

Arts education in innovation-driven societies

by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, Senior Analyst and Project Leader, Directorate for Education and Skill, and 
Ellen Winner, Professor and Chair of Psychology, Boston College

There is growing consensus that today’s economies require people who can contribute and adapt to innovation. In addition to strong technical skills, many international task forces on the future requirements of our societies have identified skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration as critical. Some even see the rise of a “creative class” as the driver of growth, and subject to a growing international competition for talent.

In this context, education systems have to equip students with the skills required for innovation societies, and some countries take this agenda very seriously.

Artists are role models for innovation in our societies, along with scientists and entrepreneurs, and thus it is not surprising that many see arts education as a means of developing skills critical for innovation. According to Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education, “education in the arts is more important than ever. In the global economy, creativity is essential. Today’s workers need more than just skills and knowledge to be productive and innovative participants in the workforce. […] To succeed today and in the future, America’s children will need to be inventive, resourceful, and imaginative. The best way to foster that creativity is through arts education”.

In a new OECD report, Art for Art’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education, the extent to which arts education fosters skills such as critical and creative thinking, motivation, self-confidence, and the ability to communicate and cooperate effectively is assessed. The book also examines whether arts education has an impact on learning non-arts disciplines: reading, mathematics and science.

This kind of exercise typically reveals the scope of our ignorance, and indeed currently many intuitively plausible assumptions are not backed by any empirical evidence. However, a few interesting and robust findings emerged that deserve more attention from parents, teachers and policy makers.

Acquiring foundational skills, notably reading, writing and arithmetics, is a major objective for many countries. Over and over, the PISA study finds that too many 15-year olds have only a basic proficiency in text understanding.

Strong evidence shows that theatre education in the form of enacting stories in the elementary level classroom (classroom drama) strengthens verbal skills (reading, writing, text understanding, etc.). Unfortunately, this does not seem to be a prevalent school practice in many schools.

Music education also has a clear causal impact on verbal skills, probably via its facilitation of auditory skills: music training improves phonological skills, the ability to hear speech in a noisy environment, and there is preliminary evidence that it might facilitate foreign language learning.

What about creativity? And social and behavioural skills? Here we have much less evidence. There are a few studies linking enhanced creativity with theatre and dance education, but their limited number as well as their correlational designs make it impossible to draw causal conclusions. There is also no more than tentative evidence regarding the impact of arts education on behavioural and social skills such as self-confidence, self-concept, motivation, communication and cooperation, empathy, perspective taking and the ability to regulate one’s emotions. Initial evidence concerned with education in dramatic art appears the most promising, with a few studies revealing that drama classes enhance empathy, perspective taking, and emotion regulation – plausible findings given the nature of such education.

Don’t misread these findings. The lack of evidence does not imply a lack of impact. We find very plausible the assumption that different forms of arts education have an impact on creativity, critical thinking and attitudes. For example, Studio Thinking 2 shows that visual arts teachers at their best promote reflection, meta-cognition and other creative habits of mind. They do so by teaching students to evaluate their own works and those of their peers, and asking students to talk about their working process. Research is now called for to test whether students in arts classes actually develop these habits of mind.  Other disciplines could learn from arts education how to nurture innovation-friendly habits of mind.

The impact of arts education on non-arts skills and on innovation in the labour market should not be the primary justification for arts education in today’s school curricula. Students who gain mastery in an art form may discover their future career or a lifetime passion. For all children, the arts allow for a different way of understanding than, let us say, the sciences. Arts education allows students to express themselves freely and to discover, explore and experiment. They also give them a safe place to introspect and find personal meaning. In this respect, the arts are important in their own rights for education.

Nevertheless, Art for Art’s Sake? shows that one way to foster skills for innovation societies may well be through the arts, as Arne Duncan put it.

Links:
Arts for Art’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education, by Ellen Winner, Thalia Goldstein and Stéphan Vincent­Lancrin
Art for Art’s Sake? Overview
Kunst um der Kunst Willen? Ein Überblick
CERI Innovation Strategy for Innovation and Training
Art for Art’s Sake? A gift to philanthropists and policymakers, OECDInsights
Photo credit:Cover © Violette Vincent.

The “urban advantage” in education

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Nearly half the world’s population now lives in urban areas. What does that mean for education? Results from PISA indicate that that could be good news for students who go to school in those areas. As the latest edition of PISA in Focus points out, an “urban advantage” in student performance is evident in nearly every country and economy that participated in the PISA 2009 assessment. 

PISA has shown that while large cities can be a challenge to educators, they are mostly a boon, particularly when all students can take advantage of the wealth of cultural and social opportunities that big cities offer. PISA results also show that schools in urban areas differ from schools in less-populated areas – in ways that are usually associated with better student performance.

On average across OECD countries, students who attend schools in cities of more than 100 000 people perform better in PISA than students who attend schools in villages, rural areas, or towns with up to 100 000 inhabitants. This difference in performance translates to about 20 PISA score points – the equivalent of half-a-year of schooling. In many countries and economies, the performance difference between the two groups of students reflects families’ decisions about housing and employment, which, in turn, influence how students’ socio-economic status is distributed geographically.

In all countries and economies except for Austria, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, students who attend schools in urban settings come from more advantaged socio-economic backgrounds. In Denmark, on the other hand, students whose parents have high levels of education and high-status occupations are more likely to attend schools in rural locations or in towns of up to 100 000 people. 

But the socio-economic status of students is only one of the factors that is associated with the better performance among students who attend school in cities. These schools have certain characteristics that PISA shows are positively related to performance. Urban schools are usually larger, enjoy greater responsibility for resource allocation, are less likely to experience staff shortages, are more likely to have a higher proportion of qualified teachers, and have higher student-teacher ratios than schools in rural areas and towns, especially in partner countries and economies.

An analysis of questionnaires distributed among students participating in PISA 2009 also finds that in Australia, Dubai (UAE), Estonia, Iceland, Israel, Montenegro, New Zealand, Qatar and Sweden, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to enjoy a better disciplinary climate in their classes than students who attend schools in less-populated areas (in Brazil, Mexico, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Tunisia, the opposite is true). In 15 countries, students who attend schools in urban settings are more likely to be able to choose from among a greater number and wider range of extracurricular activities.

What this tells us is that some of the conventional wisdom about big city schools may be a little off. Given the heterogeneity of the student population, large schools might actually offer students more, not less, stimulation and inspiration; and with more autonomy in allocating resources, urban schools may be better able to meet the needs of all their students.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 28: What makes urban schools different?

Photo credit: Urban Globe/ Shutterstock