Making the world a better place? English higher education and global public good

Abstract UK higher education is highly internationalised. Two-thirds of science papers with UK authors involve international collaboration, one-quarter of higher education students are international, and their fees constitute more than a fifth of institutional income. What then are the contributions of higher education and research to the global public good? The study investigates this in relation to England within UK, drawing on interviews with 37 people who construct relational global space and carry out cross-border activities. Interviewees included leaders and faculty in three universities, policy makers/regulators, national higher education organisations, and academic experts on higher education. The findings are interpreted in terms of theorisations of global spatiality and global public good. The interviewees believed that English higher education made the world a better place, but this was clearer in research than in high-fee international education, where the imperative of revenue raising took priority with no provision for equity. Potentials for the shared global public good were limited by the often methodologically nationalist and Anglo-centric terms in which cross-border relations were understood. Many saw national good and global good as synonymous, suggesting they had not moved far from the Imperial mindset. Some referred to multiple perspectives on global public good, or mission tensions in international education, but none conceived the global public good separately from national interest.