Competition for international students is heating up, with the number of students and the number of interested providers both growing rapidly.

Top Asian universities are targeting international students in New Zealand and South Korea’s “top eight” universities will be in Auckland this Saturday for a recruitment fair, reports the New Zealand Herald.

Fair organiser Audrey Chung said some universities were offering scholarships for top students.

“Asia is where the economic growth is and where jobs of the future will be, and we want to encourage students here to consider what universities in Asia can offer them for their academic and professional future.” University of Auckland professor of Asian studies Manying Ip told the Herald that the recruitment drive was part of a global exercise to attract top talent to Asia.

Meanwhile University World News reports the number of students around the globe enrolled in tertiary education may more than double to 262 million by 2025. Nearly all of this growth will be in the developing world, with more than half in China and India alone. The number of students seeking study abroad could rise to eight million – nearly three times more than today.

Higher education consultant Bob Goddard tellsUniversity World News that the worldwide increase is being fuelled by greater numbers of young people entering the peak education ages along with sharply rising participation rates, especially in the non-compulsory education years.

But the developing countries experiencing a huge demand for further and higher education will be unable to provide enough places, Mr Goddard says.

Mr Goddard says while English-speaking countries have been long accustomed to dominating the market in selling international education to students, that situation is undergoing rapid change.

Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Middle East are developing their own capacities to offer education to outsiders. Singapore hopes to attract 150,000 foreign students by 2015, Malaysia 100,000 by 2020 and Jordan 100,000 by the same year.

China, despite facing huge demand for higher education from its own young people, is planning to expand its enrolments of foreigners from 200,000 at present to 300,000 by 2020.

Then there are developed countries such as Japan that have shown little interest in the past in marketing education overseas. With an ageing population and an increasingly under-utilised higher education sector, Mr Goddard says there is a growing realisation among the Japanese that this could provide opportunities for “substantial levels of international recruitment”.