A few days ago, I was listening to a podcast on international education. One of the questions is about what the future will be like for international higher education, the guest, an international education specialist from Egypt, said that in fifteen or twenty years, it would be a global university where students could study for their degrees in multiple countries, for instance, one year in Egypt, one semester in the UK and another year somewhere in Asia.
Tripartite Programme (Global mobility)
Historically, there was a Tripartite Programme created in 1980 among the French, German, English and Spanish universities. This resonates with the emerging trend and trajectory that we have seen recently, led by highly reputable universities working collaboratively through tripartite arrangements, offering global mobility, exchange, and residence through jointly developed and delivered programmes. This includes the well-known and established TRIUM among New York University, the London School of Economics and HEC in Paris.
INSEAD's modular Global Executive MBA programme (GEMBA) takes place in fully integrated campuses across three regions: Europe (France), Asia (Singapore) and the Middle East (Abu Dhabi). The GEMBA offers experienced executives an intensive 14 to 17-month fast-track to the top via one of the world's most prestigious and multicultural business schools. In the creative space, one case study is the Global Fashion Management course delivered jointly by the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Institute Francais de la Mode. It seems that all these tripartite programmes currently are profiled for business executives. But would this be the beginning of the future of international higher education and become a more common practice within the sector? This in many ways also resonates with the Transnational Education model of UK universities in Europe.
TNE (UK-Europe)
With Brexit completed, we have seen a 30 to 40% drop in European direct applications to study in the UK reported by UCAS, because of the higher tuition fee as well as immigration policies, and access or no access to scholarships or tuition-free funds. On the country, TNE in Europe has been steady growth for the UK universities during the last 's few years. Based on the reports produced by British Council in 2022, a large number of students in TNE programmes in Europe are international students themselves, for example, someone from Greece or India studying in Germany on TNE programmes. In general, there is a positive attitude towards the future of TNE in Europe.
However, TNE in Europe does portray its own distinctive features in many ways.
The first one is with regard to the setup of the collaborative relations that might be driven from a bottom-up approach based on the existing staff student's mobility or joint research projects. That is not to say that a top-down strategic approach and alliance is not an uncommon phenomenon in a region.
Secondly, TNE in most Asian countries comes as a form of validation or franchise where the UK universities are not involved in the actual teaching delivery, with the exception of China where UK universities have to contribute to a minimum of 1/3 of the teaching delivery or some practices in HK. For most of the TNE models in Europe, we have witnessed a mixture of both.
Thirdly another common feature of TNE in Europe is the flexibility and opportunities for students coming to study in the UK as part of the degree. This also allows the graduates to be eligible for the postgraduate route scheme.
Fourthly, online delivery accelerated by COVID-19 also creates a new possibility of TNE livery with potentially multiple partners and stakeholders, even with the involvement of the industries.
We could argue that this is driven by several reasons, regionally improved quality offering of higher education demonstrated through QS or THE ranking or TNE provisions available from reputable universities, the geographical proximity to enjoy the cultural familiarity and close to home, affordability in terms of tuition phase as well as living costs; similar cultural or educational backgrounds to be able to adapt to the new study and life in the country, finally the access to potential employer ability in that country or back home.
When we look at international higher education, the national governmental strategies are driven greatly by its national economic, educational, cultural as well as geographic context and significance. For some countries, this would be tuned towards economic or financial gain; opportunities to drive research collaboration to innovate; for others, a learning journey to improve its own quality of education, or to increase the capacity to meet the growing domestic needs; for others, it could be driven by the decolonisation agenda of its universities to foster the re-thinking of mutual collaboration on education and research.
What does this mean for the UK transnational education agenda? As we know, TNE comes with different types of collaborative models, franchise, validation, joint degree, dual degrees or international branch campuses. It also comes with distinctive shape and size from undergraduates to postgraduates to PhD level, with this scale of individual students under a joint PhD project, to hundreds of students on a validated or franchise collaborative collaboration, to thousands of students on the international branch campus. We all know the significance of TNE for UK universities to grow their global footprint, in terms of reputation building, knowledge generation, research impact, as well as financial, social and sustainable responsibility. It is critical that we keep refreshing our TNE strategy to ensure that we are working towards a sustainable future plan.
De-globalisation to Regionalisation
Despite the pie of international education getting bigger and bigger, it seems that more players are on the table to get a piece. Equally, with the quality enhancements and improved ranking of universities from emerging regions or countries, coupled with the transnational education hub development and investment, we are witnessing a new trend of students seeking international education within the region rather than traditionally to more developed Western countries. For instance, students from Asia might prefer to study in Singapore or Malaysia instead of the UK or the USA or Australia; Chinese students choose to go to HK or Singapore as their first choice; Or students from India or Pakistan might opt to study in Saudi Arabia or UAE; or students from Africa they might choose to go to universities or international programmes in Egypt rather than coming to study in the UK or Canada.
Private-public Collaboration
In another space, during the last few years, within international education, we have also witnessed an accelerated collaboration between private and public universities as well as the emergence of private education globally.
On the international student recruitment and enrolment dimension, recruiting agents have existed probably as long as universities recruit students internationally. However, the reliance on recruitment agencies to drive the number and diversity of international students at UK universities has entered a new phase, including exclusive country or regional representations to dedicated international admissions support for UK universities.
Working with private education providers to deliver TNE is a growing trend in the sector, in particular, working on the International Branch campus model where the UK universities do not intend to take the risk or are financially unable to invest in the initial infrastructure for such initiatives. Of course, working with local providers also offers comfort to UK universities in navigating the local context, such as bureaucratic legal procedures or local knowledge and expertise on student recruitment and enrolments.
We have seen more and more private-public integrated international colleges in the UK than ever before; branch campuses or joint development of students accommodation; online OPM model, or English language or even employability support of UK universities. Of course, with the current financial pressure of UK universities, the private-public collaborations create the space for scalability, co-opetition, and survival and thrive strategy.
What is the future?
When students start questioning the value of higher education when alternative educational provisions such as online and lifelong learning opportunities offer flexibility and immediate employability relevance, what is the future of international higher education?
So, going back to the first question, what is the future of international higher education, what is your view?
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