From Importing Students to Exporting Education: Paul Bennett on the UK's Global Shift

For decades, the UK's international education story was simple: attract as many overseas students as possible to study on British soil. That story is changing. The UK's updated international education strategy is pushing universities toward a different model — bringing British degrees to students in their own countries, rather than relying purely on students traveling to the UK. To understand what this shift actually means in practice, Studyportals spoke with Paul Julian Bennett, Chief Marketing Officer at British University Vietnam (BUV), who offered a firsthand view from one of the fastest-growing education markets in Southeast Asia.

The UK's Strategy Shift, Explained

The UK government's updated International Education Strategy marks a genuine departure from its predecessor. Where the 2019 version focused heavily on growing the number of international students physically studying in the UK, the new approach removes targets on inbound international student numbers and instead prioritizes growing education exports overseas — with an ambition to reach £40 billion a year by 2030, up from around £20 billion currently generated through international students, transnational education, and related activity.

In practice, this means UK providers are being actively encouraged to expand internationally: building overseas campuses, forming teaching partnerships with institutions abroad, and delivering UK qualifications in the countries where students actually live — rather than requiring students to relocate to the UK to access them.

According to Bennett, much of what's driving this shift comes down to domestic politics playing out across several major destination countries at once, not just the UK. Public appetite for the kind of open, high-volume international student migration that characterized the past couple of decades has cooled in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. The UK government has tightened visa issuance for international students and placed more restrictions on how long graduates can remain in the country after finishing their studies — a pattern Bennett also observed firsthand during time spent working in Australia, where post-study pathways that once made staying long-term realistic for students from Southeast Asia, China, and India have similarly narrowed.

Rather than treating this purely as a retreat, the UK government has repositioned it as a growth opportunity: if fewer students can easily come to Britain, bring British education to them instead.

Why "Exporting Education" Makes Sense

Bennett argues the strategy is genuinely sound economics, not just a political workaround. For students across Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America, studying in the UK outright is often prohibitively expensive once tuition, exchange rates, and cost of living are all factored in. Exporting the education model — delivering the same quality qualification much closer to home — makes a UK degree accessible to a far larger pool of students who could never have afforded to study in Britain directly.

There are two broad models UK universities are using to do this:

1. Direct branch campuses, where a single UK university (such as the University of Southampton) opens its own campus abroad, in countries like Malaysia or Thailand. This model gives students access to a single institution's qualifications, but building a branch campus from scratch is a slow process due to regulatory approval requirements, and it limits student choice to whichever one university has expanded there.
2. Multi-partner teaching institutions, the model BUV itself uses. Rather than representing a single UK university, BUV operates as an independent teaching institution with seven UK university partners — spanning institutions like the University of London, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Stirling, Arts University Bournemouth, Bournemouth University, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Staffordshire University. Students studying at BUV can choose their programme, and effectively their preferred partner university's qualification, all from a single campus in Vietnam — giving them meaningfully more choice across ranking tier, tuition cost, and programme complexity than a single-university branch campus could offer.

Why Vietnam

BUV's decision to build a major campus specifically in Vietnam reflects a set of factors Bennett considers central to where UK education exports are likely to succeed going forward:

1. Sustained, rapid economic growth. Vietnam has maintained strong GDP growth for the better part of a decade, at a pace that has outstripped China's historic growth rate and India's as well, drawing major international investment as global companies court its expanding middle class.
2. A large, young population. With roughly 112 million people — nearly double the UK's population — and around half under the age of 35, Vietnam represents both a large current market and a long growth runway.
3. Strategic regional positioning. Vietnam sits close to China, India, and Singapore, making it an attractive hub for companies and institutions looking to expand across the wider region.
4. Government commitment to education. BUV has been actively involved in government-level education partnerships, including joint delegations and memoranda of understanding with Chinese universities to support collaboration and student exchange.

The scale of investment behind BUV's campus is significant: BUV's owner — who also owns Taylor's Education Group, one of Asia's largest education providers — invested approximately $165 million into the new campus. Despite currently enrolling around 4,000 students, Bennett describes the facilities as comparable to major universities with far larger enrollments and government funding behind them.

Solving the "Local Context" Problem

One issue Bennett raises about traditional overseas study is subtler than cost or visas: local market relevance. Students who complete a full degree in the UK typically encounter case studies, guest lecturers, and business examples drawn from the UK market. That's valuable in its own right, but it can leave graduates with a strong qualification and comparatively limited insight into how business actually works in their home market — a gap employers notice.

BUV's model is designed to close that gap directly: students receive the same UK qualification and academic structure, but taught with local context layered in. The result, in Bennett's framing, is a genuinely Southeast Asian learning experience built around an international curriculum — combining the credibility of a UK degree with practical fluency in the local business environment employers actually expect.

Connecting Education Directly to Employers

A recurring theme in Bennett's account of BUV's strategy is how deliberately the institution ties its academic programmes to real employer needs, rather than treating curriculum design and industry engagement as separate tracks.

BUV works with roughly 500 companies, including around 150 major global organizations — names like Bosch, Panasonic, and HSBC — alongside large Vietnamese conglomerates such as Vingroup. This network supports structured internship placements designed to ensure students get genuine, substantive experience (shadowing multiple managers across different operational areas, for example) rather than being used as low-value seasonal labour.

BUV is also currently leading a national employability study in partnership with Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training, surveying around 400 high-growth companies' HR and strategy teams to identify the academic, practical, and human skills they'll need from future graduates. One concrete outcome of this employer-facing approach: starting in the 2026–27 intake, every incoming BUV student will receive an internationally funded experience built into their tuition — including a planned two-week visit to China, currently one of the most advanced AI markets globally, to observe companies actively using AI in transformative ways.

Bennett points to Hanoi's planned metro system — a major infrastructure project the Vietnamese government has committed to building over the next 25 years — as a concrete example of this forward planning in action. BUV is already in conversation with companies involved in the project to understand what kinds of graduates they'll need three to five years out, shaping programme design in logistics, business management, AI, and technology accordingly.

What This Means for Students Weighing Their Options

For students and families evaluating whether an overseas branch campus or transnational programme can deliver the same value as studying directly in the UK, Bennett's perspective offers a few practical takeaways:

1. Return on investment matters more than ever. With many families investing significant sums into international education, Bennett stresses that both students and parents should think carefully about whether a given qualification will translate into genuinely stronger career opportunities and long-term value — not simply prestige.
2. Flexibility is often more valuable than a single "best" choice. A strong, recognized qualification gives graduates the ability to move across roles and industries rather than being locked into one narrow path — something Bennett considers increasingly important as career trajectories become less linear.
3. Local context can be a genuine advantage, not a compromise. A UK qualification delivered with local market grounding can leave graduates better prepared for their home job market than the same degree completed entirely abroad, without sacrificing the international credibility of the qualification itself.
4. Look at how directly a programme connects to industry. Structured employer partnerships, meaningful internships, and curriculum shaped by direct employer input are practical signals of a programme's real-world value — not just its ranking or brand name.

The Bigger Picture

Bennett's account of BUV's model offers a concrete, on-the-ground illustration of where the UK's broader international education strategy is heading: rather than competing purely on the ability to attract students to Britain, UK universities are increasingly building durable, revenue-generating partnerships that bring British qualifications directly into fast-growing economies. For countries like Vietnam — young, rapidly developing, and hungry for internationally credible qualifications — that shift represents a genuine opportunity. For the UK, it's a strategic bet that education can remain one of the country's most valuable exports, even as the political appetite for large-scale inbound student migration continues to shift.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the UK's updated International Education Strategy? It's a government strategy that shifts focus away from growing the number of international students studying physically in the UK, and toward growing UK education exports overseas — including transnational education, overseas campuses, and international partnerships — with a target of £40 billion in annual education exports by 2030.

What does "exporting education" mean in practice? It means UK universities delivering their qualifications and curricula in other countries, either through branch campuses or partnerships with local teaching institutions, rather than requiring students to travel to the UK to access a British qualification.

Why is Vietnam significant for UK education exports? Vietnam combines rapid, sustained economic growth, a large and young population, and strategic regional positioning near China, India, and Singapore — making it an attractive base for UK universities and transnational education providers looking to expand across Southeast Asia.

How does a multi-partner teaching model like BUV's differ from a traditional branch campus? A single-university branch campus offers access to just one institution's qualifications. A multi-partner model like BUV's works with several UK universities simultaneously, giving students a choice of qualifications, price points, and academic focus areas from a single overseas campus.

Does studying at an overseas branch campus offer the same value as studying in the UK directly? It can offer distinct advantages — including significantly lower cost, closer proximity to family, and stronger grounding in the local job market — while still awarding the same UK qualification, though the specific value depends heavily on the individual institution's academic quality, industry connections, and accreditation.