Rethinking International Education Policy Amid a Growing Backlash to International Students

 

International education has become a booming business over the last two decades, generating hundreds of billions of dollars annually for universities and local economies and providing a critical human-capital pipeline. Yet there are signs that public and policymaker attitudes toward international students are starting to shift in major destination countries including the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada amid a surge in post-pandemic arrivals and concerns about their impacts on already stressed housing markets. These worries add to longer-standing questions about the integrity of the educational programs offered to international students, as well as whether or how evenly the international student pipeline can deliver on its most optimistic promises to alleviate host-country skill and labor gaps. A new report from the Migration Policy Institute’s Transatlantic Council on Migration examines this crossroads at which policymakers find themselves—juggling the tensions between rising demand for international education, the financial imperatives of maintaining or growing international student admissions and the challenging politics of international migration. The report, by MPI Global Fellow Elizabeth Collett, details the balancing act that governments will have to perform between their immigration, education and workforce development objectives, before concluding with thoughts on aligning policies with future labor market needs. With the Trump administration recently revoking visas for more than 300 international students, citing their political engagement, the increasingly competitive landscape over new students and their tuition fees may evolve in unanticipated ways. Today, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada are the prime destinations for the world’s 6.4 million international students—triple the number in 2000—with newer destinations such as Germany, Russia, Turkey, Japan, France, Argentina and the Netherlands also attracting growing numbers. While Chinese and Indian nationals are among the largest groups of international students, enrollment is rising from countries as varied as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Brazil. But as demand for international education grows, Collett writes, “Governments should work with educational institutions to facilitate a multi-stakeholder discussion about what the optimum levels of international students in the long term might be and what balance should be struck between onshore and offshore learning.” The report, International Student Mobility: A Post-Pandemic Reset or a Broader Challenge?, makes clear that managing future demand in international education will involve potentially leveraging one or both of the following routes and sets of tools: Using immigration policy to shape intake demand, manage access to the labor market and permanent stay, and address concerns around the quality and integrity of education, while minimizing local impacts. Leaning into emerging trends in transnational learning and meeting the demand for international education without the need to move, while leaving open the possibility of later migration for work. Tackling the future of international education will require going beyond the demand-led market approach to consider competing priorities, planning ahead for future admissions and effects on local communities, innovating ways to shape demand without creating boom-bust policy cycles and doing so before these questions become politically sensitive. Read the report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/international-student-mobility.

Challenging long-held beliefs about eye contact in autistic children

 

Children with autism are believed to face difficulties in social interactions, besides also lacking the ability to be attentive while interacting with others. In fact, eye contact avoidance is a key behavioral marker in the clinical diagnosis of autism. However, most developing children also seldom make direct eye contact during everyday play interactions, calling into question the applicability of this behavioral marker in diagnoses.

Conducting further investigations to decode the behavioral indicators of autism, a new study led by  Lu Qu and  Qiaoyun Liu at East China Normal University’s Shanghai Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Education revealed that autistic children exhibit social attention patterns similar to their typically developing peers during play, with a primary focus on toys rather than faces. Published online in the ECNU Review of Education on March 17, 2025, their findings challenge the longstanding assumption that reduced eye contact is a definitive marker of autism.

According to the researchers, most conventional studies use an artificial clinical setting to measure children’s joint attention skills. These tests involve presenting stimuli, such as toys, to children and observing their gaze patterns to assess their ability to follow and initiate joint attention. However, these tests are usually conducted in standardized lab environments and may not fully reflect children’s performance in natural settings.

Tiding over these conventional methods, the authors in this study utilized a novel, non-intrusive AI-powered observation lab to analyze gaze, vocalizations, and movements in natural settings—addressing limitations of traditional lab-based assessments like the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS). This approach captured authentic behaviors, revealing that standardized tests may overlook critical social communication strategies. The research involved multimodal behavioral analysis of children across three groups: typically developing children, autistic children, and children with developmental delays. Ethical approval was obtained from East China Normal University, with funding from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation and National Key Research and Development Program.

The results of this study were quite surprising. Both autistic and typically developing children spent 60%—80% of their playtime focused on toys and only 6%—14% looking at adults’ faces, suggesting that eye contact avoidance may not be unique to autism only. Nonverbal communicative cues, such as caregivers’ hand movements, were also found to play a significant role in joint attention during interactions. These results align with recent studies in Current Biology (2022), which found that children rarely look at faces during natural play, regardless of autism diagnosis.

These findings may have important implications for understanding attention spans in children with autism. According to the authors, the long-held belief that autistic children avoid eye contact may be exaggerated. While autistic children are known to look at their parents’ faces less often than typically developing children, this difference may not be that significant. Additionally, these findings suggest that children may use other communication cues to participate in social settings, especially during play-related activities.

Moreover, these findings could have significant implications for clinical practice as well. Many clinical interventions for autistic children focus on improving attention and encouraging eye contact. However, the results of this study suggest that these interventions may not be suitable for all autistic children, especially for play-related activities. Instead, the authors suggest that using alternative interventions, such as parents’ hand positions and communicative gestures, could be more effective.

“Our findings emphasize the need to rethink interventions focused solely on eye contact,” say lead researchers  Qu and Liu. Adding further, they claim, “Targeting broader cues, such as gestures, could better support autistic children’s communication development.” The study calls for updated diagnostic frameworks and personalized intervention strategies that reflect the diverse ways in which children engage socially.

According to Qu and Liu, “In this era of artificial intelligence, our understanding of the core symptoms of autism needs continuous updating. Classical research paradigms must be re-examined, and continuous exploration and research must be conducted to understand children’s natural behaviors in social communication, especially in a natural environment.” Going ahead, the researchers hope that studies like this help improve and provide appropriate and effective support for autistic children.

Test-based school quality measures are more accurate tha survey-based measures

 School districts increasingly gauge school quality with surveys that ask about school climate and student engagement. This study uses data from New York City's middle and high schools to compare the long-run predictive validity of surveys with that of conventional test score value-added models (VAMs). The analysis leverages the New York school match, which includes an element of random assignment, to validate a wide range of school quality estimates. 

The study contrasts the predictiveness of survey- and test-based measures for school effects on consequential outcomes related to high school graduation and college enrollment. Survey data generate better predictions of school impacts on high school graduation than test scores. But school effects on advanced high school diplomas and college attainment are better predicted by test score VAMs than surveys. 

The authors quantify the practical value of test-based and survey-based school quality measures by simulating the effects of access to one or both types of information for parents. Parents interested in boosting their children's college attainment benefit more from test score value-added than from survey data.

Bussing in of urban students has no negative impact on suburban student outcomes.

Over sixty years following Brown vs. Board of Education, racial and socioeconomic segregation and lack of equal access to educational opportunities persist. Across the country, voluntary desegregation busing programs aim to ameliorate these imbalances and disparities. A longstanding Massachusetts program, METCO, buses K-12 students of color from Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts to 37 suburban districts that voluntarily enroll urban students. Supporters of the program argue that it prepares students to be active citizens in our multicultural society. Opponents question the value of the program and worry it may have a negative impact on suburban student outcomes.

This study estimates the causal effect of exposure to diversity through the METCO program by using two types of variation: difference-in-difference analysis of schools stopping and starting their METCO enrollment and two-stage least squares analysis of space availability for METCO students. 

Both methods rule out substantial test score, attendance, or suspension effects of having METCO peers. Classroom ability distribution and classroom suspension rates remain similar when METCO programs start and stop. There is no negative impact on college preparation, competitiveness, persistence, or graduation.

Classroom talk plays a key part in the teaching of writing, study shows

 

The way teachers manage classroom discussion with pupils plays a key role in the teaching of writing, a new study shows.

The research shows the importance of managing classroom discussion in a way that develops pupils’ understanding of the choices that writers make, and how those choices create particular effects for readers. This discussion helps pupils to think more about the choices that they make in their own writing.

The study reinforces the importance of dedicating time to discussion in secondary English lessons. It shows that time should be given to exploratory, speculative discussion that encourages students to share their initial impressions and ideas about the texts that they read.

Dr Ruth Newman, from the University of Exeter, observed classroom talk about writing – also referred to as ‘metalinguistic talk’ - in Year 9 classes as part of a three-year ESRC funded project.

The study highlights the importance of “scaffolding” discussion and making explicit the relationship between the language choices that writers make and the effect of those choices. Vague or clustered questioning may obscure meaning or scaffold insufficiently learners’ understandings and diminish the potential for dialogue.

Dr Newman said: “The study reinforces the importance of teachers finding space in lessons for everyone to respond to texts in a speculative and exploratory way. This can engage students’ interest and help them to build on what they already know about writing. This also gives teachers an opportunity to check students’ understandings”

“Carefully led, purposeful discussion helps pupils think about how writers make choices about language, and how these choices shape meaning”

Dr Newman said: “Managing this talk about writing is a highly skilled task. It requires careful handling and development of unanticipated responses. Students less eager or able to contribute might also need support and discursive scaffolds to access textual meaning and verbalise thinking.”

Dr Newman has been working closely with seven teachers in the South-West of England for three years. She observed their lessons, which were captured by a digital recorder worn by the teacher and a video recorder in the classroom.

Dr Newman also examined existing research for evidence of how talk about writing influences learners’ knowledge about language use and writing choices. This showed the importance of supporting teachers to develop classroom talk about writing through professional dialogue, reflection and collaboration.

The studies showed opportunities to engage in talk about language may have an impact on students’ ]learning about language use, and on their own writing.

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Journal

Research Papers in Education

DOI

10.1080/02671522.2024.2447559 

Smartphone bans fail to equip children for healthy use of technology

Banning smartphone and social media access alone fails to equip children for healthy use of technology, argues a group of international experts in The BMJ today.

They say the focus should shift to a rights based approach, underpinned by age appropriate design and education, that protects children from harm while developing skills to help them participate in a digital society.

Bans on smartphone and social media access have been advocated in many countries to protect children from harm despite lack of evidence on their effects, explain Victoria Goodyear and colleagues.

For example, a recent evaluation of school smartphone policies in England reported that restricted smartphone use in schools was not associated with benefits to adolescent mental health and wellbeing, physical activity and sleep, educational attainment, or classroom behaviour. 

That study also found no evidence of school restrictions being associated with lower levels of overall phone or media use or problematic social media use.

While technology-free moments and spaces are important for children, the authors argue that blanket restrictions are “stop gap solutions that do little to support children’s longer term healthy engagement with digital spaces across school, home, and other contexts, and their successful transition into adolescence and adulthood in a technology filled world.”

Instead, they call for a rights based approach to smartphone and social media use, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recommends ways of protecting children from harm while nurturing the healthy development of smartphone and social media use.

Recent international legislation, such as the European Union’s Digital Services Act and the UK Online Safety Act, also reflect a clear understanding of the need to ensure children’s uses of technology are compatible with their wellbeing.

Immediate priorities are to improve legislation for the tech industry grounded in children’s rights and create professional training and guidance for schools, teachers, and parents to help them be actively involved in the development of children’s healthy technology use and in shaping future policies and approaches, they write. 

They acknowledge several potential challenges, but say in the longer term, this approach is likely to be more beneficial and sustainable as it is focused on building a safe ecosystem in a digital society.

“Ultimately, there is a need to shift debates, policies, and practices from a sole focus on restricting smartphone and social media access toward an emphasis on nurturing children’s skills for healthy technology use,” they conclude.

The ‘culture of silence’ vs. reporting sexual harassment among university employees and students

 Complete report

The MeToo-movement challenges the ‘culture of silence’ regarding sexual harassment (SH). There are few studies regarding this phenomenon in academic settings. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between having reported or disclosed SH, on the one hand, and background factors and general health and wellbeing of exposed individuals, types of SH and perpetrator characteristics, on the other hand.

Methods and results

A questionnaire sent to all employees and students at a large Swedish university was returned by 33% (N = 2736) and 32% (N = 9677), respectively. This study is based on the 469 employees and 2044 students who affirmed that they had been exposed to SH at the university. Analyses were made by means of chi2 tests and logistic regression. Among employees, 38.8% had disclosed, i.e., talked to someone at the university about their experience, and 17.3% had formally reported, i.e., talked to someone at the university who had the obligation to act on this information. The corresponding figures among students were 11.2% and 4.0%. A higher professional rank was linked to lower disclosing and reporting behavior, although not statistically significantly. Among students, exposure to attempted or completed rape was linked to low rates of disclosing (24.3%) and reporting (8.1%). An asymmetrical power relationship was associated with higher rates of disclosing and reporting; although statistically significant for reporting only among employees, and for disclosing only among students. None of the health-related outcomes were related to disclosing or reporting.

Conclusions

The study confirmed a culture of silence regarding SH in the university setting. Several factors were linked to this, which can be associated with gendered and other power relations in society at large and in the academic setting in particular. Similar factors affected employees as well as students, but the culture of silence seemed more pronounced among students.