Diversity Doesn’t Matter.. Until it Does!

“I was shocked to find that literally 95% of the students on my course were from China!”

What are your main considerations for choosing the right course and university in the UK? The ranking?  The cost? Did you think much about the diversity of the student community, for example the nationality breakdown on your course?

For many searching for their course in the UK, diversity isn’t high on the priority list.  Universities themselves don’t talk too much about this area.  It can be more complicated or varied than simple metrics, like the cost or the ranking.

But try speaking to those who have already been international students. They’ll probably tell you why this is such an important consideration.  If you’re coming to the UK to study, you probably expect something of a UK study experience, right?  But imagine if you find that almost all of your fellow course-mates are from one other country!

One graduate from a well-known Russell Group university recently told me: “I was shocked to find that literally 95% of the students on my course were from China! I am interested in to meet Chinese people, but this is not what I expected at a UK university!”

Would you also be disappointed if this happened to you? Perhaps even more so if the vast majority were from your own country? You may even have more nationalities in your class by staying at home!

Not all universities or all courses are like this. From direct experience of the university in question, I can vouch that it is in general a diverse community and an excellent place to study. But diversity matters at the course level not just the university in general. It’s a good idea to factor this aspect into your search and try to get an idea of the nationality mix you’re going in to.

How much is too much?

There’s one major trend to be aware of. The large majority of UK undergraduate degree students are from the UK and the large majority of UK masters students are international.

Of course this isn’t true in all cases, but the chances are that if you’re coming to do a masters in the UK, most of your course-mates would be non-British. Some people are surprised by this at first, but still have a very positive experience. Studying with others from around the world can be fantastic, particularly with a reasonable level of cultural diversity, to naturally foster interaction on a level playing field.

Finding the right balance can really be up to the individual. You may feel more comfortable or less home-sick having people from your own country around. Or you might want to avoid them completely. Most people want to have a balance - being able to easily find their fellow nationality when they feel like it, but also wanting an international experience and being forced to branch out a little rather than staying in a nationality comfort-zone bubble.

Even if your course is dominated by another nationality, that might not always be a bad thing. You might like the fact that half of your course-mates are Spanish-speaking, if that happens to be a language you have been trying to learn!  The best diversity level or mix really depends on the individual, but it’s something to think about and to investigate.

Detective Work

Very few course pages will talk about the nationality breakdown of their students and of course this can change from year to year. 

There is also not too much comparison information widely available. One rare source of information however, is The Hotcourses Diversity Index (HDI).

This can be very useful it gives you a breakdown of nationality percentages and its quite impressive that this can easily be filtered by level – undergrad or postgrad and by subject area too. However the ranking given appears to be purely based only the number of nationalities, which naturally favours larger institutions and doesn’t always mean that there aren’t dominant nationality groups.  Another limitation is that the UK data is based on Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), meaning its always about two years or more out of date. This can make a big difference, particularly over the last 2 years when there have been huge increases in numbers from India and Nigeria. Still, the HDI is definitely worth a look and can be very useful as a rare source of information.

So, until more information is widely available it can also be helpful to speak to people directly and find out about your course or department – including current or former students or university staff. Sometimes universities are able to provide specific information on request such as the nationality breakdown of your course the previous year.  If you have an interview as part of your admission process it’s a good question to ask if given the opportunity.

Bentley GSC can help to investigate and find out how diverse your course is likely to be.

Though it’s not easy to find information on student nationality breakdown, Bentley GSC can help in this regard. Whilst we cannot magic up a report giving you all recent data on all course cohorts, we can give general information.
Once you have a filtered down your target courses or even hold offers, Bentley GSC can help to investigate and find out how diverse your course is likely to be. It’s a question that more international applicants need to ask!

 Contact Us to find out more.