Talking on a panel in regards to the financial impression of worldwide college students and graduates on host international locations on the NAFSA convention 2024, Italy’s former schooling minister urged delegates to undertake a balanced and unified strategy to attracting worldwide college students.
“We’d like a type of steadiness; we want extra educated college students, however within the meantime, we don’t should be too jealous,” Professor Francesco Profumo instructed NAFSA delegates.
“Europe wants to ascertain a normal mannequin to essentially perceive what we are able to do to draw extra college students whereas additionally giving them optimistic suggestions to return to their house international locations as a result of enhancing the standard of life there may be one of the best funding they can provide.”
Of roughly 800,000 kids who had been born in Italy in 2004, some 500,000 graduated from Italian secondary college final yr, Profumo defined.
Of those college students, 300,000 will register at college in Italy and 60% will go on to graduate.
180,000 college students – 22.5% of the preliminary 800,000 – will turn into college graduates.
22% of Italians born in 2004 will go on to turn into college graduates
Professor Francesco Profumo
In comparability, as of 2021, 47% of adults within the UAE had at the very least a bachelors diploma, adopted by Lithuania (38%), the US (38%) and the UK (37%).
Italy’s diminishing home pupil inhabitants is being additional fuelled by the nation’s quickly declining birthrate.
After Japan, Italy is the oldest inhabitants on the earth and, since 2004, the annual variety of infants born within the nation has greater than halved, with 370,000 born in 2023.
Whereas different international locations reminiscent of Canada, Australia and the Netherlands are limiting worldwide pupil numbers, Italy is welcoming abroad college students to fill the gaps in its increased schooling system.
Prior to now decade, the variety of abroad college students in Italy elevated by 67%.
The rise is carefully associated to wider patterns of migration, with 50% of scholars from Asia and 30% from Africa. But the best variety of worldwide college students in Italy come from Romania, with 11,239 in whole.
In response to Profumo, the nation must modernise its universities and profit from “the flows of individuals coming from everywhere in the world who need an schooling”.
Training is the precedence for this age and schooling must be international
Professor Francesco Profumo
“There are lots of contradictions within the attraction of worldwide college students and the promotion of upper schooling establishments is these days associated to the demographic decline and the fixed development of the scarcity of extremely certified personnel.
“It’s a vital aim for Italy and Europe and we should now deal with enabling these new generations to consistently upskill and reskill, additionally of their international locations, thus being at all times prepared for the brand new and altering calls for of the labour market,” Profumo wrote on LinkedIn
“Training is the precedence for this age and schooling must be international,” he instructed delegates.
