This research aims to stimulate the nascent research agenda on the environmental sustainability of the ongoing mushrooming of international student mobility (ISM). The higher education (HE) system in the UK and elsewhere is increasingly predicated upon the hosting of international students. Whilst this drive towards internationalisation undoubtably has multiple benefits, little attention thus far has been paid to its potentially very considerable environmental impact. The drive for internationalisation within HE thus potentially sits at odds with ambitions and strategies to promote sustainability within the sector and beyond. Design/methodology/approach – In-depth interviews with 21 students and representatives of university international offices offer insights into how the environment features in the decisions that young people and HE institutions make with regards to partaking in and promoting education-related mobility and online survey. Findings – The results find that students take environmental considerations into account when undertaking education-related mobility, but these aspirations are often secondary to logistical issues concerning the financial cost and longer travel times associated with greener travel options. At the institutional scale, vociferously championed university sustainability agendas have yet to be reconciled with the financial imperative to recruit evermore international students.Building on the achievements and key findings from the past eight years of CPC, the scientific programme during the transition funding period consists of a set of projects that consolidate and extend that research, providing an opportunity to follow-up on new avenues of enquiry suggested by our prior work and to response to advances in the field generated by CPC and elsewhere. The scientific agenda also lays the foundation for an anticipated bid for full Centre funding i.e. for CPC-III, retaining key research staff and, importantly the Administrative and KE Hub. The innovative research within CPC-II has, and will continue to, generate exciting and novel findings. Maximising the impact of these, both within the scientific community and wider economic and societal impact will therefore be a core activity during transition. Our research will continue to be organised around the five thematic areas of: 1. Fertility and family change 2. Increasing longevity and the changing life course 3. New mobilities and migration 4. Understanding intergenerational relations & exchange 5. Integrated demographic estimation and forecasting These thematic areas explicitly recognise the dynamic interaction of the individual components of population change both with each other and with economic and social processes. The first three themes reflect the three main components of population change: fertility, mortality and migration. Understanding how trends such as the ageing of the population, changes in family formation and dissolution and increased mobility (spatial, economic and social) are both shaped by and in turn shape international relations and flows of support is essential for assessing the role of the family beyond the household and for debates around intergenerational solidarity and justice. Finally, one of the most notable successes of CPC has been in the area of innovative methods and modelling, and we will continue to work at the cutting edge of developments in demographic modelling, collaborating closely with ONS and other national statistical agencies. CPC will continue its contribution to three areas identified by the ESRC as of key importance: the design of academic research with a consideration for its policy implications and a high impact on the wellbeing of persons in society; the incorporation of a significant capacity-building element in the research programme with the training of emerging social scientists in the multi-disciplinary area of population change; and the exploitation of existing and newly-available sources of quantitative data, some of which are core ESRC investments. Continued engagement with our partners ONS and NRS and other users will ensure our research remains timely and relevant.

In-depth interviews with 21 students and representatives of 14 university international offices offer insights into how the environment features in the decisions that young people and HE institutions make with regards to partaking in and promoting education-related mobility. All interviews conducted online. Sampling procedure: student interviews via an on-line survey and international offices via cold contacting universities, stratified according to level of prestige and internationalization. Please see this report for more details regrading methodology: ESRC Centre for Population Change. Working Paper 102. June 2022. David McCollum and Hebe Nicholson. International student mobility and environmental sustainability, Working through the tensions. An online survey was also conducted with students enrolled in an UK University.