BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
mid travel restrictions and a shortage of options, the demand for flights from China to the UK among international students was so high that education company INTO University Partnerships set up a series of chartered flights to get students to the start of their courses in time for the start of this year’s academic year. It did the same thing in
worse the next year, in autumn 2021, when all scheduled flights were suspended, so we organised more flights then and again in January 2022. Although scheduled flights [between China and the UK] resumed in August 2022, there was not enough capacity in mid-to-late September to meet the demand, so we again organised an additional six flights in September this year. What were the main challenges in making this initiative a success? The travel agencies involved can’t issue the tickets until all the final approvals have come through and these sometimes don’t come through until the last minute, so students who sign up for the flights are often waiting until just a few days ahead of their travel date before their ticket can be issued. We have never had an issue with getting these approvals and they have always come through in the end, but there are always some students who are a little concerned about not having received their ticket until just a few days before they travel. What was the role of advocacy body Universities UK in this initiative? Universities UK helped connect us with the relevant people at the British Embassy in China to get the approvals from both the British and Chinese side. Universities UK also promoted this initiative to other UK universities to help get enough student demand together to fill the aircrafts. Are there any plans for similar initiatives in conjunction with students/university bodies from other countries? We did help to promote a special student charter flight to Chicago via our Chinese social media channels earlier this summer. However,
both 2020 and 2021. The flights are just one indication of how the market for international student recruitment has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. While the ability to travel has varied widely between countries, and continues to do so, China makes for one of the most important case studies due to the sheer scale of numbers involved and its significance to the market as a whole. In the UK, for example, more than 600,000 international students enrolled in higher education institutions in the year 2020/21, of which the largest number – almost 100,000 – came from China, according to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). To tell us more about the chartered flights initiative and the outlook for international student recruitment, Business Impact spoke to INTO’s operations director for China, Sam Clews. He also sheds light on student motivations and their interest in online and hybrid modes of education. What were the reasons behind INTO’s decision to take the lead in arranging chartered flights for international students travelling from China to the UK? We first got involved in chartering flights for students to the UK in autumn 2020 due to a lack of scheduled capacity [for flights] at the peak time when students are looking to travel. The situation was
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“As a longer-term initiative, institutions could help connect students from the same country who may wish to co-ordinate travel arrangements”
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