"International Students adopts a more wide-ranging approach that has the student at its centre. The result is a very readable study ... . The book has a number of strengths that make it accessible, informative, and critically astute. ... themed chapters definitely add a layer of narrative and analysis that sets this book apart from other studies. ... This is a fine book and Perraton has done a worthy service to collate everything in such an appealing and stimulating fashion." (Giles Scott-Smith, H-Soz-Kult, hsozkult.de, January 26, 2022)
"Perraton's historical account of international student mobility is painstakingly and meticulously researched. It provides for the reader a tightly woven synthesis of sources ... . . It is one that I will return to often and see myself citing regularly, a go-to reference tome for the history of this field. ... this book is to be lauded for contributing a detailed synthesis and historical account of a multifaceted global topic. ... It is a welcome read ... ." (Jenna Mittelmeier, Higher Education, April 19, 2021)
List of tables
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Part one: Narratives
2 Origins: Student travel before the First World War
3 Rise and fall: Between the wars
4 Thirty glorious years: Postwar ideology and development
5 Cooperation or competition: Into the market
Part two: Themes
6 Children of the gorgeous east: Indian students and Britain
7 Profitable work for Uncle Sam? American two-way traffic
8 Warm welcome in the cold war: The competition for students
9 Get them young: Children across borders
10 The soldiers' tales: International military training
11 Follow the money: Who has met the costs and why
12 Conclusion
Index
Hilary Perraton worked for most of his career in international education. He is a former deputy chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom and in recent years has been a research associate of the von Hügel Institute, St Edmund's College, Cambridge, and a visiting fellow at the University of London Institute of Education. His previous books include A history of foreign students in Britain and Learning abroad: A history of the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan.
This book describes how the number of international students has grown in 150 years, from 60,000 to nearly 4 million. It examines the policies adopted towards them by institutions and governments round the world, exploring who travelled, why, and who paid for them. In 1860 most international students travelled within Europe; by 2010 the largest numbers were from Asia. Foreign students have shaped the universities where they studied, been shaped by them, and gone on to change their own lives and societies. Policies for student mobility developed as a function of student demand and of institutional or national interest. At different times they were influenced by the needs of empire, by the cold war, by governments' search for soft power, by labour markets, and by the contribution students made to university finance. Along with university students, others travelled abroad to study: trainee nurses, military officers, the most deprived and the most privileged schoolchildren. All their stories are a vital part of the world's history of education and of its broader social and political history.