International student mobility and environmental sustainability.: Working through the tensions

McCollum, David and Nicholson, Hebe , Mcgowan, Teresa (ed.) (2022) International student mobility and environmental sustainability.: Working through the tensions (The ESRC Centre for Population Change Working Paper Series, 103) ESRC Centre for Population Change 64pp.

Abstract

International Student Mobility (ISM) is an important part of universities’ strategy in the UK. However, environmental sustainability is also increasingly important for universities and there is a tension in how best to incorporate environmental sustainability into ISM strategy, when it is reliant on oversea students traveling to university, usually by aeroplane.
This research explored how environmental sustainability is considered by those responsible for promoting ISM within universities, and also student themselves.
Our research involved a survey of 144 full time students, 21 follow up interviews with them, and 14 staff involved in determining university strategy on ISM. These staff and students were from a range of 30 different British universities.
The survey results suggest that international students have a statistically significant higher average carbon footprint than domestic students (7.17 tonnes of CO2e and 4.63 tonnes of CO2e per year respectively). This difference is the equivalent of the emissions from a return flight from New Delhi to London Heathrow. Indeed, our survey indicated that it was the travel between university and usual place of residence that was responsible for the difference in
emissions between domestic and international students.
In the interviews, students discussed how the pandemic had changed their perspective on travel. Students described the need for travel to be purposeful, which was partly connected to greater consideration of the environmental costs related to it. Many of the staff described how the Covid-19 pandemic had changed their working practices to drastically reduce the travel associated with promoting ISM. Staff suggested that a reduction in travel, along with an accompanying move to online activities and in-country partners or agents, was likely to remain after the pandemic. Many highlighted how this was a way in which their universities were becoming more environmentally sustainable.
Most of the students, and all the staff, interviewed indicated that they thought the benefits of ISM, particularly with regards to learning from different cultures, outweighed the environmental costs associated with ISM.
The staff interviews indicated that environmental sustainability changes to ISM strategy were happening but ultimately not to the extent that it would impact significantly on student recruitment. Thus, whilst environmental sustainability was regarded as important, this was trumped by the financial necessity to recruit international students. There was a unanimous view that financial imperatives would continue to take precedent over environmental concerns, and that this would only change if the funding model for higher education was restructured
and/or student demand changed. Students suggested that they did feel they could influence university policy, but chiefly as a collective and not individually.
Students and staff alike, often emphasised the responsibility of universities to (a) provide education on environmental sustainability and (b) cover the financial costs of offsetting carbon emissions from ISM.

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Contributors

Editor: Teresa Mcgowan

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