Transnational education has become big business for UK universities. The
latest data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, reveal
that the sector has more international students studying wholly offshore
than on universities’ home campuses. The UK government has, in turn,
become enthusiastic about the potential growth in this market.
Transnational education offers universities a way of reaching the
increasing number of foreign students who want a UK degree, but who are
unable or unwilling to travel to the UK for study.
Better yet, transnational education breaks the link between conventional
‘export education’ and student immigration, which is currently so
politically controversial in the UK, allowing universities to grow
international enrolments without the cross-border movement of students.
International students on-campus vs studying wholly overseas
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Of the plethora of ways in which universities can teach foreign students
in their own countries, the best known is distance learning.
Although the emergence of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, opens up the possibility that anyone with an internet connection can enrol at a major US university, distance learning has been around for decades in the guise of correspondence courses.
Indeed, the University of London has been providing international
distance learning degrees since 1858, just a decade after Samuel Morse
transmitted the world’s first telegraph message.
Dominating distance learning as a way of reaching foreign students, and
dwarfing the high-profile offshore campuses of some Russell Group
universities, is what one critic termed the ‘McDonaldisation’ of higher
education.
Like a classic industrial franchise, many UK universities license a
third party – usually a private, for-profit company – to deliver their
degrees through a foreign college.
In 2010-11, more than 330,000 foreign students were enrolled on UK
degrees through such franchisees, compared with 94,000 taking courses by
distance learning and 10,000 students enrolled at satellite campuses
like the University of Nottingham Malaysia.
There are many flavours of university licensing, just as there are in the corporate world.
Like McDonalds, many universities require their partners to deliver a
curriculum and assessment regime that is as close as possible to the
same degree on their home campus – the ‘Big Mac should taste the same in
Beijing as in Birmingham’ principle.
In other cases, the university may evaluate a degree designed by the
foreign partner and, if it deems it to be of acceptable quality, allow
the partner to market, teach and award the qualification as a degree of
the university.
Export education
Licensing degrees in this way is widely assumed to be a natural
extension of export education. With public funding growing scarcer,
earning revenue from international tuition provides a welcome route to
diversifying and growing revenue streams.
The annual value to UK higher education of (non-European Union) international students on campus exceeds £2.5 billion (US$3.9 billion) in tuition fee income alone.
But for every student who shivers on a UK campus, there are many more
who cannot come to the UK for study, either because they cannot afford
the cost of tuition and board or because they are deterred by distance
or cultural or religious factors.
Licensing degrees to local partners opens up this new market. Local
colleges can recruit local teachers at local salaries, unlike their
university partners, which need to hire expensive, highly trained
academics to support their research as well as teaching.
Local colleges can focus on high-demand courses in low-cost subjects
like business and management, avoiding the heavy capital costs of a
traditional university campus with laboratories and research libraries.
Offering licensed degrees at much lower tuition fees, which students can
study in their own countries, creates a new source of demand for UK
degrees and, after deducting local costs and service fees, potentially
leaves a healthy royalty for the universities involved.
The government’s policy focus on the importance of transnational
education, the vast numbers of students involved and the growing
professionalisation of university management, all point to licensing
being driven by an overwhelmingly financial imperative.
But a recent study published in the
Higher Education Quarterly,
“Why do English universities really franchise degrees to overseas
providers?”, suggests there may be other motives operating behind the
scenes.
The study finds that licensing is a predominantly post-92 university
phenomenon, with most ‘redbrick’ universities shying away from the
principal-agent risk inherent in allowing a third party to recruit to,
teach and-or assess a degree under the university’s badge.
Licensing developed in the 1990s in a unique set of circumstances. The
post-92 universities gained degree-awarding powers in 1992 after years
of being validated centres of the Council for National Academic Awards.
Unlike their redbrick counterparts, the post-92 universities had
sophisticated quality assurance systems and were expert at designing
curricula and assessment regimes for external audit. It was a short step
from being a validated centre to becoming a validating institution.
The post-92 universities were also keen to take advantage of the growing
market for international students and, as private companies began to
court the ‘new’ universities to allow them to offer their degrees,
licensing offered a quick and effective way of internationalising a
university and raising its profile in new, otherwise inaccessible
markets.
So far, so good.
But overlaying this dynamic was another feature of the 1990s, the end of
the Cold War and the availability of huge sums of European Union
funding for UK universities to work with former Soviet bloc counterparts
and develop their curricula.
At a time when most university academics regarded themselves as
providers of public goods, this created an atmosphere in which
international partnerships, including licensing arrangements, were seen
primarily as development aid projects, with any profit a happy
by-product.
Strong affiliations
The study also finds that, a decade and a half later, many of the
participants interviewed across several universities felt that licensing
arrangements had been maintained for extended periods for a range of
non-financial motives.
University staff developed strong affiliations with their colleagues in
the partner colleges and visiting the partners provided a range of
benefits from staff development, building a spirit of camaraderie among
staff and, at worst, a welcome break from day-to-day teaching.
Many champions of licensing passionately believe they are supporting the
educational development of the countries in which they operate.
Overall, this study challenges the notion that licensing degrees has been an aggressive strategy of market penetration by UK universities, which has the scope to be – in Universities Minister David Willetts’ words – “one of Britain’s great growth industries of the future”.
Instead, it finds that licensing has often been driven by a desire to be internationally connected and engaged in the educational development of other countries, and has been sustained over an extended period by enthusiasts with personal loyalties to colleagues thousands of kilometres away, reinforced by visits and longstanding friendships.
In the end, licensing might be ‘big business’, but while it may not be good business in financial terms, it is also not the money-grubbing cultural imperialism feared by so many of its critics.
* Nigel Healey is pro-vice-chancellor (international) at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
