Attending university has traditionally been as much about the life experience as being stretched academically.
Universities can help young people feel they are part of a global community and are more politically empowered if institutions take in a wide range of international students, a survey of students at one of the UAE’s top universities has shown.
Students exposed to other cultures and religions are more likely to favour globalisation, while they will also feel like they can influence politics and make a difference, researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi found. But growing friction between leading nations is now translating into restrictions on international places at elite universities, reducing the exposure students have to people from other cultures.
“The Gulf is holding up multilateralism at a time when other countries are abandoning it,” said Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington, associate professor of psychology at NYUAD, who helped lead the research.
Students at NYUAD are asked to complete a survey at different times during their degree that aims to measure their “global identity”, or how much they see themselves as part of a global community rather than a local or national one.
NYUAD is the UAE campus of the well-known US university and served as a case study because of its high intake of students from 120 countries. A fifth are the first in their family to go to university and almost all of them are on scholarships covering their fees, housing and living expenses, which is not so widely available at elite fee-paying universities in the US and Europe. “Students come from Kazakhstan, Bolivia, Kosovo, Uganda. It’s a real melting pot,” Ms Sheehy-Skeffington told The National.
The study found that sharing accommodation with a randomly selected roommate from a different background was a key driver in making students feel like they are part of a wider global community, increasing tolerance and empathy towards other cultures.
It comes as many countries retreat from the world stage owing to growing nationalism, backlash against immigration and a scepticism towards multilateral organisations such as the UN.
The idea of being a “global citizen” can have negative connotations in countries such as the UK, where some view the label as a sign the person is an out-of-touch business elite with no loyalty to the country they live in. Former Conservative prime minister Theresa May said in 2016 that "if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what citizenship means".
But Ms Sheehy-Skeffington, a former consultant to the British civil service who worked on issues related to conflict and terrorism, insisted there is no trade-off between developing a global identity and concern for national or local issues. Having a global mindset can help students feel more confident about influencing the political process, known as “political efficacy”, she added.
Students with a global mindset “feel they can make a difference”, Ms Sheehy-Skeffington said. This in turn makes them less likely to espouse extremist ideas. “When political efficacy goes down, it creates a backlash that creates groups that are more extreme,” she said.
“If you develop a sense of identity as a global citizen, if you endorse this mindset, your political efficacy goes up,” she added. Those students are also likely to have a “higher concern for global inequality”.
The survey, also led by PJ Henry of NYUAD and Tatiana Karabchuk from UAE University, is issued to each new cohort of students at the start of the academic year and focuses on their family background and world views.
The students are surveyed again throughout their time at university, with questions about their on-campus activities and experiences. Their answers are used to assess how, over the years, their views change towards their identification with the university, their support for globalisation and how they feel about talking to others and socialising.
“The global resurgence of populist and authoritarian leaders in democratic countries has been argued to signal a decline in internationalist attitudes and the displacement of economic concerns with concerns that are more cultural in nature – unease around notions such as identity, values and recognition,” the researchers wrote in a 2024 paper about the survey, published by the LSE Middle East Centre.
“Campus experiences appear to play an important role in shaping the development of global identity over time. Specifically, for those students starting with lower levels of identification as a global citizen, living with a roommate from another ethnicity."
Surveyed students remain anonymous, but they are given a randomised code that allows them to track their responses in a chart. The methods used by researchers were inspired by a 2008 study on how social attitudes develop on campuses at the University of California.
Growing anti-immigration sentiment in countries such as the UK has led to restrictions being imposed on international students – with backlash from universities that rely on their higher fees for income.
International students who graduate in the UK now have less time to look for a job in the country, causing a drop in the number of people who view degrees secured in Britain as an investment towards a future career. Another restriction affecting mainly post-graduate students means they can no longer bring close family and dependents with them.
Ms Sheehy-Skeffington urged all universities to view international students as “more than just an income source” and to award more scholarships for overseas students.
