The Irish Council for International Students (which retains the acronym ICOS) is an independent, non-profit organisation formally established by representatives of Irish universities, with the encouragement of the government, in 1970. Its stated aims remain as they were then: to promote the general welfare of international students (and trainees) in Ireland, and to encourage the best possible policy and practice at national and at institutional level. It can be seen, and has largely seen itself, as a specialised student service agency, which provides direct services to students, to third-level institutions and to government, and also acts as a catalyst within the institutions.
In ICOS' present membership of almost 40 organisations and institutions, the Irish universities, DIT, RTCs and other third-level colleges predominate, but several professional certification and training bodies, church organisations and development agencies are also represented. All have a history of active involvement in educating and training people from abroad, and their nominated representatives provide an ICOS presence in each institution.
ICOS began with the voluntary hospitality and support offered in the 1960s to the young African medical and engineering undergraduates who were the most recognisable foreign students in Ireland at that time. It has continued to be associated with students from the majority world, most notably in recent years by administering Fellowship schemes, including the Irish Aid Fellowship Programme, which now brings around 150 postgraduates from Africa and Asia to Irish universities. Its advisory and information services are open to any student or trainee from any country outside Ireland, so the potential clientele is truly international.
ICOS' current range of activities includes: advice and information services; counselling and case-work; the administration of Fellowships and multi-faceted support of Study Fellows; provision of training for college staff who deal with international students; and promoting or carrying out relevant data-gathering and research, seminars and publications. It has contributed its particular perspective, expertise and support to a number of anti-racist and refugee-related initiatives in recent years, and runs an annual development education programme, using Irish Aid Study Fellows as resource persons, in schools in the Galway region.
ICOS' working definition of an international student follows the universities' own: one whose normal place of residence is outside the island of Ireland but who is resident in Ireland for the purpose of study over a shorter or longer period. This definition has not excluded many refugee students in Ireland from benefiting from ICOS' services in recent years, but it has not so far been extended to students ordinarily resident in Ireland, who define themselves as members of minority ethnic groups. Interestingly, in the more multi-ethnic context of many UK higher education institutions, this question has led to much debate and heart-searching about the provision of appropriate student services for these categories of student.
Over recent decades, there has been a fairly constant but small-scale presence in some Irish universities of what were previously called 'overseas students', who included full-course students from Asia and Africa, students from mainland Britain, a very few Europeans and some short-term visiting students, mostly from North America. Highly selective entry, high tuition fees and the lack of former colonial ties meant that there was not a substantial 'third world' undergraduate and postgraduate presence comparable to that in the universities of many of our European neighbours.
However, since the end of the 1980s, there has been both a quantitative and a qualitative change, which would have been far more conspicuous if there had not been an even more marked increase in Irish student numbers at third level during this period, as a result of government policy on the provision of third level places.
Accurate and up-to-date statistics on international students in Irish third level colleges are not readily obtainable, since no one agency is charged with responsibility for collating information on all categories across the sector. ICOS conducts an informal annual survey of colleges 2 who are members of ICOS, and on this basis its most recent estimate, for the academic year 1994/95, suggests an international total in full-time third level education of around 6,500 or 6/7% of the total student body, as compared with just over 5% of total in 1990/91, and a lower percentage prior to that. Most striking in that year was the fact that international numbers in some of the universities reached almost 10% of total. By then, most universities had appointed staff to specific posts of responsibility, often in designated International Offices.
It is important to understand the composition of this greatly increased presence from abroad. The most dramatic growth in Ireland has, in fact, been largely as a result of students from the European Community attending Irish universities on a short-term exchange basis (one semester or one year) through the EU Commission-funded schemes ERASMUS and LINGUA. From the early 1990s, they have comprised well over half the registered international students in the country in any one year, and outside the traditional universities, they form the overwhelming majority.
This significant new student population is in reality the basis on which most institutional developments have taken place, and continue to take place as the SOCRATES programme, with its emphasis on the 'institutional contract', is implemented.
However, since the start of the 1990s, there has also been a marked expansion in other categories, based on a totally different frame of thinking - an economic and market-driven one. Discreet government pressure (signalled in the Green Paper on Education of 1992) 3 on universities to generate extra fee income from international students led to increased efforts to capitalise on Ireland's various 'market advantages' (especially the English language) by recruiting students prepared to pay 'full-cost' or 'economic' non-EU fees, often for places in medical schools and on the expanding range of taught postgraduate courses in areas like business studies and computing. A specialised agency, IEBI (International Education Board Ireland), whose brief included market research and specific support to such recruiting efforts, is now in its fourth year of operation. As in the past, small-scale agreements between individual third level institutions and non-EU governments have resulted in modest annual intakes of sponsored students into certain faculties.
Also falling within this framework of financially-driven recruiting has been the extremely successful expansion of the North American 'business' which brings substantial numbers of undergraduates to study in Irish universities for one semester or one academic year. Even the Gulf War did little to affect the steady upward growth of this sector, based as it is on strong American-Irish links. The demand is potentially greater than the available supply of places.
It is also appropriate to include a further category of international student which has shown a significant recent increase as a result of government policy, in this case that of the Department of Foreign Affairs, whose Irish Aid Fellowships Programme was effectively doubled in 1993. The great majority of the Study Fellows are young professional people, coming from posts in Ministries, universities and colleges, hospitals and a variety of agencies in their home countries, and they attend postgraduate courses in order to extend their skills and experience for the ultimate benefit of their home countries in Africa and Asia.
There are, thus, several very distinct sub-sets within the overall category 'international student', according to the student's place of origin, length of study period in Ireland, discipline/faculty, level of studies, method of financial support and so-on. They can also be distinguished by different motivations and expectations in relation to study in Ireland, and by differing degrees of general integration with their Irish peers; these two aspects are, of course, inter-connected. As far as gender is concerned, there is unlikely to have been any significant change from the position up to 1991/1992, the last year in which ICOS undertook a comprehensive statistical overview. 4 Female students predominated in the short-term exchange and visiting groups from the EU and the US, while most non-EU postgraduates especially in health sciences, natural sciences and technology, were male.
Concepts of equity and equality have rarely been explicitly signalled as such in ICOS' thinking, although in some ways, they have not been far from the surface either. In the context of the setting up of the HEEU and the enactment of new equality legislation, it will certainly be valuable to try to identify and clarify the inter-connections.
In a general way, ideas about global equity have always featured in ICOS' urging of universities and to government not to exclude students from the poorer countries outside Europe, particularly since the individuals appointed as ICOS representatives have often themselves had a strong sense of justice towards the majority world. And it is fair to say that ICOS' fundamental aim of promoting the welfare of the international student is based on a conviction of the right of these students to benefit from the university experience as equals alongside Irish students, with whatever that implies in terms of specialised support services.
Given the nature of the organisation and its background, ICOS has tended to frame many of the questions and issues it has raised in recent years primarily in relation to a central concept of service, a concept which has evolved since its early years from a generalised humanitarian notion to a much more pragmatic - but probably more student-centred - ideal of customer or client service. International students have increasingly been seen as a specific clientele - or several separate clienteles - with specific needs, and the focus has been on what they have a right to expect by way of information, counselling, practical support services and cultural understanding if they are to derive maximum benefit from their study period in Ireland.
This was the thinking that lay behind ICOS' initiating of the first major research survey of the experience of international students in Ireland in 1987 5 which identified a number of deficits, particularly in information, accommodation and institutional arrangements, which could affect their experience, and possibly their academic success, in Ireland. ICOS used these as the basis for recommendations to the colleges, which had some definite influence on the development of specific services on campus and is considering the feasibility of a new survey ten years on from the first. Between 1990 and 1995 it held three seminars which brought together senior university personnel, both academic and administrative, government representatives and students themselves to debate practical support issues as well as national and institutional policy matters.
The notion of responsibility in honouring agreements and meeting reasonable expectations is clearly involved in the ideal of good customer service, and in 1992, ICOS published a set of guidelines for institutions on policy matters, organisational arrangements, academic issues, student support services and information requirements. 6 It included specific recommendations regarding anti-discrimination/anti-racist policies, staff development for increased understanding of differences - educational, cultural and religious - and appropriate provision in terms of student housing, student counselling, health services, catering etc.
Over the last five years ICOS has tried to support developments in these areas by offering training workshops for staff members (mostly administrative and student services staff) who work closely with international students - several of these tackle cultural and religious matters.
A good example of a specific initiative taken by ICOS on the basis of the collective responsibility of its member institutions was the support service it provided - with the collaboration of these member colleges and of several Government Departments - to students from the Gulf region cut off from financial support, and often from personal and family contacts, when the conflict broke out in 1990/91. Over a nine-month period, ICOS succeeded in its aim of ensuring that no student would be forced to abandon their studies part-way through the academic year as a result of the war. Out of this experience grew a hardship scheme designed to assist individuals whose chances of successful completion of studies are threatened by circumstances beyond their control, and it has pressed the colleges to expand their own hardship arrangements similarly.
ICOS is no longer substantially involved (except in relation to the Irish Aid Programme and in UCG) in providing direct practical services to individual international students in the third-level institutions. It has, however, two important roles which serve the cause of fair and equal treatment of international students. First, as an advisory service, it can sometimes mediate effectively between a student and the authorities in his or her college when misunderstandings or conflicts arise. Second, it can act as an international student's advocate when difficulties arise with a government Department. It can also raise authoritatively with government issues common to groups of international students, as it did, for example, in the context of the 1993 Inter-Departmental Committee on Non-Irish Nationals.
These are some of the ways in which ICOS' core work and values can be seen to have a relationship to the equity/equality framework of thinking.
This frequently asked question in the equity/equality debate is very difficult to apply to the case of international students, and it may not be very productive to do so. While some institutions may bewail the changes in the international student presence over the decades, it is not simply the arrival of full-cost fees that has diminished the flow of students from poorer countries; the picture is far more complex than that. As far as access itself to Irish institutions is concerned, there is no obvious principle applicable to the right of access of a non-resident or non-citizen to a small and selective system under heavy demand from the home population.
The principle guiding the entry procedures of the Irish Aid Fellowships Programme is one of giving access to those who can make a difference to the poor on their return home, through their professional work in rural adult education, maternity clinics, teacher training, legal advice centres etc.
To ICOS' knowledge, no-one has put forward a workable proposal on access for international students which answers a genuine concern for global justice, and is not just tokenism. However, one practical way in which Irish Institutions might address this aspect of equality of access relates to the almost total absence from the substantial groups of students coming each year from Europe and North America, of the minority groups of those countries.
African-Americans or French citizens of North African parentage, for example, simply do not feature on the Junior Year Abroad programmes or ERASMUS exchanges. If there is pressure for ERASMUS grants for Irish students to be improved to enable poorer Irish students to participate, so perhaps Irish colleges might encourage their partner institutions to consider this question, or could widen their circle of partner institutions? There is no doubt that the kinds of cross-cultural learning that might then take place would be of immense value to everyone involved.
Another issue which may arise soon as a result of the abolition of undergraduate tuition fees - although the HEA's Steering Committee report (1995) appears to discount it 7 - is a greatly increased demand from students in other EU member states for access to full courses, rather than to exchange arrangements. It remains to be seen if Ireland will experience the same pressures as the UK has in recent years, and if so, what regulatory or selection mechanisms will be put in place.
The questions are more straightforward when it comes to matters of proper services and practical support to enable those students who have already been accepted into Irish third level colleges to derive the fullest benefit from their studies.
Great improvements have certainly been made over recent years, but as the basic support structures have been put in place, more complex and subtle questions have emerged and will require adequate responses if trends in the international student population continue. A new survey of these students' experiences, ten years on from ICOS' first, would be invaluable in giving a clear indication of the size and severity of problems, and would generate a more informed debate about how far institutions should go in addressing them.
The following are some of the issues ICOS believes need further exploration by third level institutions which take their responsibilities to their international students seriously. Many, but not all, of them will apply more obviously to students from outside Europe and North America, and to postgraduates than to undergraduates.
ICOS' work in relation to issues such as those outlined above has taken various forms: research and date-gathering, case-work, training of college staff, dialogue at various levels between ICOS and the institutions and so on. At the time of writing, the organisation has just embarked on a review of its own aims, structures and activities, which may lead to new initiatives or different forms of action.
In this European Year Against Racism, ICOS is exploring the possibility of conducting research into racism and the international student, and is considering the feasibility of revisiting the questions we asked in the 1987 research survey of international students' experiences in Ireland, to find out what has changed for them and what remains the same.
We should now add to our agenda an intention to hold discussions with the HEEU to clarify the concerns we have in common, and to look for practical ways in which we can use our joint resources to act on these concerns.
Education for a Changing World; Green Paper on Education; Stationery Office; Dublin; 1992.
Report of the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education; Higher Education Authority; Dublin; 1995.
Responsible Recruiting; A Code of Practice for Third Level Colleges; ICOS; Dublin; 1992.
Statistics of International Students in Ireland; 1991-1992; ICOS; Dublin; 1994.
SUS Research for the Irish Council for Overseas Students: Overseas Students in Ireland; ICOS; Dublin; 1988.
1 ICOS is grateful to the Higher Education Equality Unit for this opportunity to present the organisation and its activities to a potentially new audience. We hope the information and views offered will add to an understanding of the situation of international students in Irish third level colleges, and will suggest areas of common concern, and possibly of common action.Return to Main Text
2 ICOS. Unpublished.Return to Main Text
3 Education for a Changing World; Green Paper on Education; Stationery Office; Dublin; 1992. P. 233-237.Return to Main Text
4 Statistics of International Students in Ireland; 1991-1992; ICOS; Dublin; 1994.Return to Main Text
5 SUS Research for the Irish Council for Overseas Students: Overseas Students in Ireland; ICOS; Dublin; 1988.Return to Main Text
6 Responsible Recruiting; A Code of Practice for Third Level Colleges; ICOS; Dublin; 1992.Return to Main Text
7 Report of the Steering Committee on the Future Development of Higher Education; Higher Education Authority; Dublin; 1995.Return to Main Text