Welcome to Middlesex Uni, Madras

Middlesex University attracts a lot of overseas students - and it's not all down to the 'London effect'. Its practice of setting up overseas offices is reaping rewards, writes Caroline Haydon

Indian student Naresh Proddaturi wanted to come to England to study computer networks, but needed advice on where to go. Eventually, through reading British newspapers he found out that Middlesex University had an office near him in Madras, south India. Naresh visited the office staff three times. "They were really helpful," he says. "I wasn't sure which courses were suitable for me and when you can speak to a person it is better."

Naresh is now studying for his MSc in computer networks and is a student representative, as well as taking an active role in improving the course as a member of the board of studies for the MSc programme.

He is one of a growing number of overseas students at Middlesex, which has seen a huge rise in the past few years in the numbers it manages to attract internationally. Its active policy of encouraging the growth of overseas students has put it high in the latest league tables of universities ranked according to their ability to attract international masters students.

Number seven on the list with 1,411 overseas MA students, it beats Imperial College London, which has 1,348, into eighth place. Another new university, Westminster, is tenth with 1,248 students. The top three are Strathclyde, the London School of Economics, and University College London .

The US and the UK remain the key players in the international student market. Between them they account for more than 340,000 students, around 70 per cent of the world's total. Here, Cambridge, Oxford and University College London, top the list for numbers of overseas research students.

While acknowledging "the London effect" – the larger numbers who have heard of the capital and want to study there – in the MA market, Middlesex attributes its success to a policy of setting up overseas offices and encouraging pre-course training.

"We now have 12 offices abroad and we don't recruit simply by flying into a recruitment fair and out again," says Middlesex Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr Terry Butland. "From those offices we can build up links to other institutions and they provide places where students can come to talk. Their parents come too; they need to talk about their concerns."

Middlesex now has offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul and Kuala Lumpur, as well as others in Malaysia, India, Africa, Israel, Brazil and the US. It's a policy that is paying dividends. Overseas students now make up about 20 per cent of the university's undergraduate and postgraduate population, and the number is expected to go on rising.

"We started with an office in India and 40 Indian students three years ago," says Dr Butland. "Now we have two offices and nearly 600 Indian students. We've had overseas students who have been some of the very best in the university and they contribute enormously to university life by giving us a diverse population.

"The other element that has proved successful is teaching English to bring students up to speed, either here or in their home country. And they can do a pre-university programme which covers some of their subject area, too. But many overseas students don't need either course."

The latest figures, which are produced by topgraduate.com and derived from statistics gathered by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, indicate an increasing mobility, with more and more students swapping countries for a masters degree or a doctorate. The overall growth in the international postgraduate student population is more than 15 per cent in the last five years.

The US is still the most popular overseas destination, where the number of international graduate students has risen from 94,000 in 1980 to 244,398 in 2001. But, ironically, given the popular conception of the US MBA, a greater proportion of postgraduate students coming to the UK choose a business-related subject (27 per cent) than in those going to the US (17.4 per cent).

Here, the most popular postgraduate choice is business and management studies, which includes MBAs. It's an area that attracts more than three times the number of students than the next most popular choice, engineering. When other business-related subjects, including financial management and accountancy, are included, it accounts for more than a quarter of subject choices.

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