Agents of internationalisation? Danish universities' practices for attracting international students

Attracting International Students to Semi-peripheral Countries: A Comparative Study of Norway, Poland and Portugal

“…In Europe, the United Kingdom, France and Germany are the most popular destinations (OECD, 2017). However, smaller European countries have lately become aware of the opportunity presented by increasing flows of international students (Cox, 2013;Kondakci, 2011;Mosneaga and Agergaard, 2012) as a means of compensating for a declining demography and dwindling public funding. Student mobility is, indeed, the most frequent international activity of European HEIs, with interest shifting from the national to the European or the worldwide community (Sursock, 2015).…”

Portuguese Institutions’ Strategies and Challenges to Attract International Students

“…The recruitment of international students has mostly been researched in the context of English-speaking countries, which are the major receiving countries (França et al, 2018). However, in recent years, researchers from countries with lower shares of international students (but with an ambition to boost their numbers) have also started to pay attention to this aspect (Cox, 2012;Kondakci, 2011;Kubiciel-Lodzinska & Ruszczak, 2016;Mosneaga & Agergaard, 2012;Urbanovič et al, 2016;Wilken & Dahlberg, 2017). According to Urbanovič et al (2016), small countries face different challenges in recruiting international students compared to their major counterparts.…”

“…For example, the prestigious Danish Technical University proactively targets prospective students from European countries where unemployment rates among engineering graduates are high and where hierarchical labor market structures make recognition difficult. This allows them to attract students for whom the Danish labor market might be appealing after graduation (Mosneaga & Agergaard, 2012). Online scholarship competitions, aimed at students in specific countries, or cooperation agreements with companies to give foreign students an entry into the labor market, are examples of more targeted recruitment strategies in Swedish institutions.…”

The international strategies of universities: deliberate or emergent?

“…This has translated into the active development of strategies, policies, programmes and infrastructure that has made many universities into institutions that take internationalisation seriously. A variety of internationalisation policies and practices have been employed and developed in HEIs, on their home campuses and abroad, to implement their internationalisation plans, such as recruiting international students (Cudmore 2005;Mosneaga and Agergaard 2012;Huang, Raimo, and Humfrey 2016), internationalising the curriculum (Haigh 2002;Luxon and Peelo 2009;Ardakani et al 2011;Magne 2015;Pandian, Baboo, and Mahfoodh 2016), promoting international research mobility (Attila and Andrea 2009;Jacob and Meek 2013), integrating international students and promoting intercultural capabilities (Stier 2006;Miller 2014), and the opening up of branch campuses in other countries which are designed to attract students who are not able to travel overseas for education (Wilkins and Huisman 2012;"Overseas Branch Campuses" 2015;Wilkins and Huisman 2015;Shams and Huisman 2016).…”