The Global Demand for Higher Education in European Countries

Abstract

Adaptation to the European Higher Education Area has prompted European universities to concentrate on becoming more attractive to students, lecturers and researchers from different world regions. This paper analyses the places of origin of international university students in different European countries. The countries are shown in groups by their international students’ places of origin. The groups of countries were formed by using a cluster analysis and, as classification variables, the percentage of foreign students from different world regions in each of the European countries. An ascending hierarchical procedure was used to form the groups and, as the distance metric, the squared Euclidean. The results indicate that it is possible to identify four groups of countries with different characteristics. Following the classification, the main differences between the groups of countries were analyzed. Observing the different groups obtained, the percentage of African and South American students is remarkable in the group of countries formed by France, Portugal and Spain. In contrast, the group of countries formed by Finland, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Ukraine, Greece and the Russian Federation is distinctive for a high average percentage of Asian students. In the other two groups of countries, there is a considerable percentage of international European students.

Keywords: global demand, university students, place of origin, European countries