Cross-border collaboration realities
Branch campuses, twinning arrangements, and other manifestations of cross-border higher education are booming. Universities in Europe, Australasia, and North America see a huge market for their degrees in other countries. Simultaneously, Singapore and several of the states in the Arabian Gulf have identified themselves as educational centres and are attracting international higher education providers. In the Gulf, there is emerging competition for attracting overseas universities. China has opened its doors to foreign institutions, and India is moving in this direction.While there are no accurate numbers, more than 500 branch campuses exist worldwide — plus thousands of ‘twinned’ programmes. In addition, the phenomenon of the ‘American University of...’ manifests another trend in cross-border higher education. There are a dozen or more such universities, some of which have a direct link with a US university, while many simply use the name ‘American’ and offer US-style curriculums in English in non-US settings. If the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) becomes part of the structure of international academic arrangements, the numbers of all kinds of cross-border institutions will increase even faster.
One significant problem exists with these arrange-ments. Who is teaching students in these branch campuses? What does a degree from a university signify if the teaching staff are not from the university offering the degree? To use the McDonald’s analogy — Is the meal (degree) a true McDonald’s hamburger if only the recipe (the curriculum) comes from McDonald’s and the ingredients (facilities) and cooks (professors) are local, rather than from the sponsoring institution?
With little data indicating the proportion of faculty members from the home universities teaching at branch or twinning campuses, anecdotal evidence indicates that the numbers are small, and most of the teaching is conducted by professors who are not faculty from the sponsoring institution. Even when they do come from the home university, teachers at branch or twinned campuses are generally not the ‘star’ research-active professors.
It is not known if some of the recent high-prestige universities that have entered the branch campus business — the University of Chicago, the Cornell University Medical School, University of Nottingham, and others —have a different profile than the many more average institutions thus far engaged. The plain truth is that most faculty members are hired locally — ‘moonlighting’ from a local university. Other ‘local hires’ are full-time staff, obtained from local academic markets or poached from neighbouring or regional institutions. Some faculty are natives of the country of the sponsoring university but not faculty members at that institution. For example, an American university in Singapore might hire an American working in Japan or Taiwan. Ph D holders teaching part-time or on short-term assignments in the home country may also be attracted to work overseas.
Attracting top quality faculty to branch campuses is not easy, particularly on a short assignment of a year or more. Except for a few specialists in the culture where the branch is located or professors committed to learning about foreign cultures, an overseas assignment for a full-time member of the academic staff at a university in Europe, North America, or Australia is not an attractive proposition. In addition to the challenges of uprooting families, finding schools for children and the like, an overseas assignment disrupts the rhythm of academic life. For younger professors anxious to obtain tenure and promotion, a foreign assignment is particularly dangerous. It will inevitably disrupt a research agenda, and in the sciences may make research impossible given the lack of equivalent laboratory equipment and staff in the campus abroad.
Although many branch campuses offer faculty from the home university additional perquisites — housing, transportation for families, payment of school fees, and there is usually a tax advantage — even these benefits may not prove a sufficient attraction. Therefore, professors at branch campuses are seldom full-time research-active faculty from the home university. Consequently an academic degree from an American university doesn’t necessarily mean that a student has studied at the university offering the degree. It doesn’t mean that the faculty of the institution dispensing the degree has taught him or her. It doesn’t mean that the curriculum and language of instruction of the home university have been used. Therefore, is it enough that the home institution has approved the qualifications of the teaching staff and that the general conditions of teaching are considered to be satisfactory? To what extent is it acceptable that prestigious universities whose fame in their home countries is based on excellence in research as well as teaching, provide an academic environment in the branch campus almost exclusively devoid of research?
Cross-border academic co-operation in transnational higher education is a characteristic of the 21st century, but it is necessary to carefully examine realities to assess the quality and effectiveness of such education.
(Philip G. Altbach is director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, USA)