Abstract:

Over recent years, there has been an increasing interest from higher education institutions (HEI) to determine their importance to the regions in which they operate. The current economic situation in Portugal is characterized with budget cuts, constant pressure over the HEIs to justify their value to society and consequently, the institutions are competing aggressively among themselves in the recruitment of students. HEI should analyse and prove the economic contribution of their presence for the region and by doing so they could compete in a more unbiased way for public funding’s and could also justify the current ones. The economic impact of HEI for the region is associated with the contribution of the national and international students. The latter represents, today, a significant share for the institutions, with the globalization of markets and societies increasing the number of international students.

Thus, the present study intends to understand how the presence of international students can influence the region, not only determining the economic impact that international students have on the region, but also to understand how their are integrated in the academy and with local residents and how their culture and backgrounds can enrich local residents culture and experiences. A quantitative approach methodology was followed, with a descriptive study developed through the implementation of a survey. The population considered were the emails made available by International Relationship Office and the academic services in 2018 that reached 1,449 international students that were enrolled in the IPB. There were 478 resposnses. The sample analysis allowed us to characterize the international students and estimate the economic impact of these students through their monthly spending and to understand how they connected with their colleagues and how was their relationship with local community. The economic impact estimated for the international students who attended the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança in the studied year attained 12.3 million euros. It was also relevant to find that almost all the international students found their experience very positive, that they felt welcome by the academy and local comunity and that they valued the opportunities provided by the IPB to publicly share their culture.

Keywords:

International students, economic impact, international study experience, academic integration.