Engaging the HE community, industry and government through benchmarking international student employability

Internationalisation and student employability are key agenda items for universities across the higher education (HE) community. Shared challenges include providing international students with employment opportunities through in-country internships, work placements and scholarships as well as providing all students with student mobility options. An international benchmarking exercise involving 10 universities across 4 countries was undertaken in late 2015 to address these shared challenges and learn from each other. This paper will provide an overview of international student employability across these 10 universities. A snapshot of key areas of good practice and areas for improvement/or further development will also be discussed. This paper argues that the future direction of higher education, in remaining competive as well as relevant to all students, is about engaging and comparing practice with other HE institutions, governments and industry partners across the sector to create a cross-sectoral, multi-layered approach to addressing key challenges such as international student employability.