IHEF 2024 forward look: Alex Bols, GuildHE

At International Higher Education Forum 2024, we will be running through GuildHE’s survey of our members, relating to their international activities last year. We will be running through the top-level results and showcasing case studies from our members. GuildHE represents 60 universities and colleges across the UK, but many of them are smaller than the average UK university, or indeed more specialist – therefore having fewer resources to develop a comprehensive international strategy. This can lead to a focus on quick wins.

But ahead of this session, most of our members are looking to increase their international activities in the coming year, with collaborative research the most cited activity.  

In smaller institutions, you often have fewer staff wearing lots of different hats. So one of the things that came across in the survey was that not only does the lead for international have quite different job titles, but also they’re at different levels often within institutions, or even doing it alongside other roles. This creates different challenges in developing international strategies and we’ll be exploring some of these issues in the session.

At GuildHE, we provide quite a lot of support to our members across international activities, such as bringing together our international network where members discuss the issues affecting them and their responses to them.

This session at #IHEF2024 is a great opportunity for institutions to come together, explore what it takes to get an international strategy off the ground, and how to take it to the next level.

There are lots of interesting sessions at IHEF. The opportunity to bring together providers of higher education from across the world to discuss the real challenges there are international higher education, but also demonstrate how robust it is and the excellent outcomes it delivers for international students and wider society as a whole. To get on the front foot and articulate that is one of the main benefits of IHEF and runs through the sessions for the two days.