Exporting Education
Sun Yat-Sen: Foreign Student in Hawaii
Not many of us think of education as an export industry, but we should. Every time a foreign student signs up at one of our local schools, no matter what the level, that is a new export. The balance of payments impact of foreign students counts just as much as if we had exported cement. The impact in ideas and goodwill can last a whole lot longer. And students are, for the most part, environmentally friendly.
To put things in perspective, Hawaii is not a major exporter. The U.S. Bureau of the Census tells us that Hawaii exported about $960 million worth of hard goods in 2008. That number is high because the data includes products that leave the United States through Hawaii, not just what is made here and exported. If you back out products that are not really of local origin, Hawaii’s physical exports were probably a little more than $500 million last year.
Services are Hawaii’s real export strength. Every foreign tourist on our beaches is an export success, and our architects and engineers are designing and building projects worldwide. None of that shows up in the official export stats, but they are exports nonetheless. Education exports have been under the radar, but that may change due to a new report issued by the State of Hawaii and the local chapter of the Association of International Educators (NAFSA). I haven’t yet seen the full report, but the press release is here.
The bottom line is that more than 13,000 international students and their families spent $160 million in Hawaii during the latest academic year. The top countries of origin (meaning our top markets) were, in order: Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and China. Switzerland! Somebody must have done some good marketing.
Three years back for my old radio show, working with NAFSA data, I came up with a back-of-the-envelope estimate that foreign students in Hawaii brought at least $50 million annually to our local economy. I am sure the new report did it in more detail, but I suspect we are seeing an awesome growth rate. At minimum, the new report demonstrates that Hawaii has a major export industry it did not even know it had! Perhaps we should think about how to help it along.
