Case Study: Swiss HE programme marketing – Re-Thinking Solutions for Mobility Exchange Imbalance Issues

Different funding structures and destination preferences coupled with an ever-increasing demand for outgoing mobility exchange, both within and beyond Europe, has led to a considerable imbalance between Europe's HEIs and their global partners. Currently, it has reached a critical level. An overhaul is needed to rekindle partnerships and to ensure sustained, balanced partnerships that are mutually beneficial for all parties. For Swiss HEI's the issue is compounded by the results of a marginally won referendum that introduced quotas that contravened EU bilateral contracts and promptly led to Swiss exclusion from EU mobility programmes. In this case study, the authors track the rapid development of internationalisation within their own institution and outline how the current challenges of addressing the imbalances are being met. External socio-economic factors are considered, tried and tested, and then easy-to-implement solutions are presented. Within this context, HEIs programme marketing takes a pole position in guaranteeing success. Therefore, the approach of ‘target and relationship marketing’ was realigned to deal with the fast changing paradigms. The current approach has partially been successful in capping and reducing mobility imbalances. However, there is not a sustainable solution, especially, in the face of increasing numbers!

This article was published in Issue 3, 2015 of the Internationalisation of Higher Education, an EAIE Handbook. From 2011–2015, the EAIE was the Editor of Internationalisation of Higher Education Handbook, published by Raabe Academic Publishers (Berlin). The EAIE holds joint copyright of all 2015 articles with DUZ Verlags- und Medienhaus GmbH.

— Authors: Robert Buttery and Brigitte Sprenger