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Our goal is to help UK universities flourish internationally through our unique ability to represent them and act in their collective interests.
Our aims
Our aims are to:
- Grow and diversify onshore recruitment of international students.
- Enhance the scale and impact of international research collaboration.
- Support the development of sustainable, scalable transnational education.
- Increase the proportion of students with international experience (especially students from low participation backgrounds).
- Help UK universities develop the capabilities, understanding and resilience to meet new challenges.
Our ‘Strategy 2021-23’ sets out our approach for achieving these aims. It focuses on four priority areas: international student recruitment, international research collaboration, transnational education and student mobility.
Read our Strategy 2021-23 here.
What we do
To achieve our aims, we:
- Enable UK universities to develop and realise their international ambitions.
- Influence the framework conditions that enable UK universities to thrive internationally.
- Create new opportunities that deliver clear benefits to our members.
Governance
We are accountable to the UUK board. UUK’s International Policy Network (IPN) advises and steers our work.
The IPN is chaired by UUK’s International Policy Lead and the University of Liverpool’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Janet Beer.
The IPN comprises Vice-Chancellors and senior university leaders from across UUK’s membership. It helps shape our thinking on increasing the international profile of UK universities across a range of issues, from enhancing the competitiveness of UK higher education as an export, to fostering international partnerships and managing risks associated with international higher education.
In addition, Professor Beer chairs our International Strategic Advisory Board (ISAB) which is tasked with holding us accountable and provides advice from our funders.
International Strategic Advisory Board
The International Strategic Advisory Board is responsible for:
- Providing strategic direction and sharing insights and intelligence on international higher education issues.
- Advising on strategies to ensure buy-in from constituent parts of the UK.
- Focusing the sector’s engagement in the European higher education agenda and discussing and approving formal UK higher education positions on key European and European Commission issues and activities (including the Bologna process).
- Discussing international higher education issues and stakeholder positions and considering appropriate sector-wide responses to them.
- Discussing and determining our priorities.
Funders can send one representative to each ISAB meeting, while UUK is represented by its chief executive and three nominated members. UUK makes sure members represent the geographical and institutional diversity of its membership and have the experience necessary to provide high-level strategic direction to our work. GuildHE is represented by its chief executive and also nominates a member to sit on the board.
Read more about our work.