The most interesting initiative in ߣߣ��Ƶ’s “steady as she goes” National Strategy for International Education, which was launched earlier this year, is the government’s aspiration to engage more deeply with alumni.

There are more than 2.5 million international graduates who have studied in ߣߣ��Ƶ, and hundreds of thousands more who have graduated from ߣߣ��Ƶn programmes delivered abroad. While ߣߣ��Ƶn alumni groups have existed in many countries for a long time, the growing importance of transnational online social networks is spurring education providers, and now governments, to significantly ramp up their efforts to engage with these communities. 

This alumni strategy is becoming integrated with existing government efforts to engage with and harness the million or more ߣߣ��Ƶn citizens living abroad. The main government-supported diaspora organisation, Advance, was formed in 2002 in New York City to connect ߣߣ��Ƶn expatriates in the US before becoming a global organisation, and has recently expanded its remit to also include “alumni of ߣߣ��Ƶn universities and ‘friends of ߣߣ��Ƶ’”. 

Similarly, in recent years we have also seen considerable interest in the role of migrant communities in shaping ߣߣ��Ƶ’s economic, educational and cultural engagement with the rest of the world.

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The ߣߣ��Ƶn Council of Learned Academies has been leading this thinking, with two excellent reports focusing on those of Asian background in ߣߣ��Ƶ (Smart Engagement with Asia: Leveraging Language, Research and Culture, ���Ի���ߣߣ��Ƶ’s Diaspora Advantage: Realising the Potential for Building Transnational Networks with Asia).

There is a growing awareness of the ways in which international education in ߣߣ��Ƶ is both shaped by and actively creates highly networked and enduring transnational communities. Many of our local students are of migrant backgrounds (a third of Melbourne’s population was born overseas, for example), and many of the new international students who come to ߣߣ��Ƶ have family and friends who have lived or studied in ߣߣ��Ƶ.

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These students are immersed before, during and after their studies in social networks that extend across borders. Right now, education providers and the government are scrambling to enmesh themselves into those networks, and this is perhaps the most exciting area of innovation in ߣߣ��Ƶn international education today. 

Christopher Ziguras is president of the International Education Association of ߣߣ��Ƶ. He  on Thursday 15 September. 

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