Internationalization of Higher Education: Student Mobility in Israel

The contemporary global era and a knowledge-based economy emphasise the importance of higher education. On the one hand, higher education is an infrastructure for advancing state competitiveness and, on the other, the distribution of attainment affects sustaining its social cohesion. However, the importance of higher education might be hindered by a low extent of access and by stratification. Furthermore, the internationalisation of higher education, in general, and student mobility, in particular, pose new challenges to higher education.
From a global perspective, over 4.3 million students studied abroad in 2011. The flow of international students is mainly from Asia to the main English-speaking countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia (Altbach & Engberg, 2014).
Overseas study encompasses a large revenue to the host country (United Kingdom and the United States each earning around US$24 billion per annum) (ibid.). However, a new study from the British Council (2018) has predicted that the growth in the overall number of students as well as the growth in the number of students leaving their home country to study abroad will slow down substantially in the next decade.
Policy implications suggest that there is a need to design a policy that is more attuned to the changing trend in student mobility worldwide. Israel, as an immigrant society, is familiar with diversification of its student body. Therefore, the Israeli case might be interesting to other countries which aspire to engage with a larger share of international students.