Of the forces shaping higher education none is more sweeping than the movement across borders. Over the past three decades the number of students leaving home each year to study abroad has grown at an annual rate of 3.9 percent, from 800,000 in 1975 to 2.5 million in 2004. Most travel from one developed nation to another, but the flow from developing to developed countries is growing rapidly. The reverse flow, from developed to developing countries, is on the rise, too. Today foreign students earn 30 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded in the United States and 38 percent of those in the United Kingdom. And the number of crossing borders for undergraduate study is growing as well, to 8 percent of the undergraduates at America’s best institutions and 10 percent of all undergraduates in the U.K. In the United States, 20 percent of the newly hired professors in science and engineering are foreign-born, and in China many newly hired faculty members at the top research universities received their graduate education abroad.
在影响高等教育的众多力量中，跨国界迁移最为重要。在过去的30多年里，出国留学的人数以每年3.9%的速度增长，从1975年的80万增加到2004年的250万。大多数人都是从一个发达国家留学到另一个发达国家，但从发展中国家到发达国家留学的人数也在迅速增加。而反向流动的留学生人数，即从发达国家到发展中国家留学，也在上升。如今，在美国，博士学位有30%被留学生拿走，在英国则为38%。此外，跨国本科留学生的人数也在增长，美国顶尖大学本科学生中有8%是留学生，英国本科学生中留学生则占了10%。在美国，新雇用的科学及工程学教授中有20%出生于国外；在中国，一些顶尖的研究型大学新雇用的许多教师也都在国外接受过研究生教育。
