Around the globe, it seems that the internationalization of higher education and economic competitiveness strategies are merging. In fact, many nations have now developed competitiveness strategies that include investment in both domestic and foreign educational institutions. As we read the latest report by the Observatory for Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) on international branch campuses (IBCs), we were struck by how rapidly IBCs seem to have emerged as tools for institutions to pursue internationalization and nations to enhance economic competitiveness.
First, we should note the status of IBCs appears to be strong. The OBHE authors suggest there are about 200 such institutions currently operating in 67 different countries. The number of such institutions appears to be growing at a fairly rapid rate, even with the publicity generated by several famous failures in recent years. Furthermore, the scale and scope of the reports have changed markedly since the OBHE first reported on the phenomenon. Their first report, issued in 2002, was 12-pages long, half of which was dedicated to one institutional case study. This latest report, the fourth, runs 88 pages and contains no institutional case studies. As we noted in our last blog, although the current report represents an important resource for those interested in the development of the phenomenon, definitional challenges prevent clear comparisons over time.
However, what really caught our attention were the discussions of motivations of both institutions and the importing countries to be involved with IBCs.
Institutional motivations for establishing an IBC seem to align with reasons driving overall internationalization strategies. According to a recent survey by the International Association of Universities, the top four factors driving institutional internationalization strategies are a desire to improve student preparedness, internationalize curriculum, enhance the institution’s international profile, and strengthen research and knowledge production. The institutional motivations for opening IBCs mirrored these rationales. Despite the potential financial and reputational risk, the OBHE report found that institutions appear motivated to create IBCs for the pursuit of new revenue, enhanced global reputation, and internationalizing the learning and research opportunities for students and faculty. Unlike the IAU study, however, the OBHE report does not rank the relative popularity of the different motivating factors. But the fact that the underlying assumptions are so similar suggests that branch campuses can be broadly compatible with an internationalization agenda. They may therefore be less of a fad and more of a feature of the future global education landscape.
The report also demonstrates that the growth of IBCs can no longer be viewed solely as an institutionally driven phenomenon. Governments throughout Asia and Middle East are actively recruiting IBCs and offering incentives as part of their competitiveness strategies. In fact, 61 of 149 institutions responded that they received some form of aid from the host government. One of the most common strategies seems to be the development of educational hubs, which have been popping up in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, among other nations. Hubs seems to serve a variety of purposes; some have been used to attract students from other countries, others foster innovation and research, while still others are meant to improve the overall quality of the education sector.
The bottom line is that the education hub represents a new form of competition in the global market–a competition among nations to improve their economic competitiveness. The recognition of higher education’s role in this competition seems to be shaping how nations approach internationalization of higher education–more from an economic perspective rather than an educational one.
Not all governments agree that internationalization is a good thing, nor will all institutions adopt an internationalization strategy that includes an overseas branch. But some governments, particularly those with money in the developing world, are interested in supporting internationalization of higher education–if not through their own campuses, then importing them from afar. More institutions are willing to see their academic programs as a resource for internationalization by projecting them abroad. Beyond updating our knowledge about the state of the IBC phenomenon, the latest OBHE report on this topic illustrates the changes occurring around the globe in internationalizing the higher-education marketplace.
