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International Exeter
annual report
2013/14
international recruitment performance
international
recruitment
performance
Enrolments
HESA data released in December 2013 showed an International-fee
population of 3,800 students for the University (FTE all years, including
students studying at our INTO Centre). Once students who entered
the INTO-Exeter Centre on academic programmes in January 2014
were included, Exeter’s non-EU population stood at 4,002, a decrease
of 3% on the same time the previous year. This slight decline can be
attributed to our focus on maintaining high academic and linguistic
entry standards, early closure of some Business School postgraduate
programmes, and a planned rebalancing by subject in support of the
University’s diversification agenda.
As the following graphs demonstrate, the University has
enjoyed considerable success in attracting international
fee students to its campuses: between 2007 and 2013,
our numbers increased by 164%. Last year, following
consultation with Colleges, our original targets were
revised so that, going forward, our new goal is to have
4,000 international fee students by December 2018,
but excluding INTO-Exeter Centre students from
this total.
A particular challenge has been to ensure that quality
of intake is not compromised in our quest for growth.
Our focus on diversification has been paying dividends, as
we seek to reduce risk through a possible over-reliance
on Business School students to fuel expansion. In fact in
2013/14, non-business Colleges witnessed encouraging
growth at the undergraduate international-fee level
of 54% in Life and Environmental Sciences; 35% for
Humanities; 26% for Social Sciences and International
Studies; and 21% for Engineering, Computing and
Mathematical Sciences. For 2014 entry we anticipate
that international undergraduate enrolments will see
double-digit growth over the same time last year, and we
are particularly pleased that this increase does not come
at the cost of quality. In fact our tariff for international
undergraduates will be slightly ahead of the average for
Home/EU students.
The challenges facing recruitment of masters students,
both international and from the UK and the EU, is a
sector-wide problem, and one which the University will
be addressing in the years to come. We will be reviewing
carefully our portfolio of postgraduate programmes, with
a comprehensive assessment of the attractiveness and
competitiveness of the degrees we offer. We will also
build carefully upon our reputation for research and PhD
provision, for example our status as a partner in one of
the UK’s largest centres of postgraduate research training.
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