Preparation for and responses to international student decline in fee-reliant higher education systems: The case of Australia and the UK

How do higher education systems and institutions that are reliant on fees from international students prepare for the potential loss of funding from international tuition fees and, when such a loss occurs, respond to it? The aim of this exploratory project is to collect evidence to study preparation for and responses to losses in higher education funding. The methodology developed and the evidence collected in this project will enable us to scale the study of this topic in further research projects, supported by external grant funding.

This project will look at the system-level and institutional-level responses in the UK and Australia. In each country, two case-study universities will be selected. The UK is used as a case to investigate preparation for the potential loss of funding from international tuition fees. Australia will be used to investigate responses to losses of funding from international student tuition fees. As part of the case study approach in this project, two universities will be selected in each country for a cross-case comparison. The case study approach in this project relies on interview data with stakeholders at each of the four universities, triangulated with policy and document analysis and supplemented by a literature review.