Professor Mushtak Al-Atabi, Provost and CEO at Heriot-Watt University Malaysia tells us how his international education journey started when he travelled from Iraq to Malaysia in 1997, where, whilst working as a mechanical engineer, joined Taylor's College as a teacher and a PhD student. As Taylor’s College started engaging in TNE partnerships with the UK, he was directly involved in teaching TNE programmes from the start.
Mushtak shares considerations on the implications of disruptive technologies such as AI for education, how international education contributes to human flourishing, the role that international students play in enriching local communities, the importance for policy makers to see international students and international education as a source of stability and growth, and how today’s global pressing political, economic and environmental challenges require building bridges not walls. He also tells us about Heriot-Watt's approach to global campuses, where the different locations in Edinburgh, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai are connected from the ground up ensuring that the quality of the learning experience is the same regardless where a students decide to study… and the memorable experience of the joy of student '1000th' transferring from the Malaysia to the Scottish campus as she was told she would receive a scholarship to go to the UK.