The world has never been flatter than today. In this digitally connected world where geographical margins are no longer relevant for human interaction, the demand for education to be global or ‘transnational’ is ever increasing. People no longer desire just education, they seek access to global knowledge. In recent years there has been a significant expansion of international partnerships and collaborations between public and private higher education institutions in Sri Lanka and other countries such as the UK, Australia, USA, Japan, China and India. There are now more than 25 UK Universities alone offering both undergraduate and Masters degree programmes in Sri Lanka followed by tens of thousands of students.
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| Tony Reilly |
Such partnerships come under the broad umbrella of what we call Transnational Education (TNE). The British Council defines Transnational Education (TNE) as education provided from one country, which is offered in another. This can be achieved by a variety of delivery modes including collaboration arrangements, franchises, distance learning, flying faculty, blended learning and split location degrees for example a student studying in Sri Lanka for 2 years and following the final year in the UK. From the late 1990s, there has been substantial growth in transnational education around the world driven by the intentions of governments to develop knowledge-based economies. This clearly chimes with Sri Lanka’s post-conflict aspirations, and is mirrored by the government’s stated ambition to establish Sri Lanka as a regional education hub. In Sri Lanka it is well known that the State Universities can only accommodate 22,000 new undergraduates each year, leaving over 80,000 students who exit the school system in search of alternatives.
The clear attraction of bringing alternative providers into the higher education sector is that it increases the physical capacity of the system without the need to provide additional capital resources. It gives greater choice and flexibility to parents and students across the world who may not be able to afford or be willing to spend several years, thousands of miles away from home. It also provides greater access to internationally recognised qualifications for thousands of students.
Increasingly, Higher Education institutions have a key role to play in developing a graduate cohort with a global perspective and with truly global capabilities. Employers now expect graduates to be globally aware and to be able to operate across cultures. This is another advantage of the expansion in TNE provision and the trend towards ‘borderless’ education.
However, the growth in TNE has raised a number of concerns too. The most important of these is around guaranteeing the quality of programmes offered through international partnerships. While course prospectuses are quick to point out that the degree students obtain on a franchised programme is the same degree they would obtain if they studied, for example, at the host UK University offering the same course in Sri Lanka, not everyone is convinced about the quality of education.
In the UK, the body responsible for monitoring quality is The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (www.qaa.ac.uk). The QAA’s remit includes oversight of TNE courses and programmes.
The UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) provides the UK with an integrated quality assurance service. It is an independent body funded by subscriptions from UK universities, HE colleges and through contracts with the main HE funding bodies. It disseminates public information about quality and standards, to meet the demands of students, employers and funding parties.
Although TNE programmes are delivered in different ways, all UK universities must ensure that the academic standards are the same as for programmes delivered in the UK. The Quality Assurance Agency has developed specific and extensive guidelines to help institutions ensure that all programmes meet the same quality standards as studying in the UK. The QAA also undertakes overseas audits to ensure that UK universities are carrying out their responsibilities properly.
Another concern with the expansion in TNE partnerships is that it would take Higher Education down the privatisation path and create conflicts with the investment in the quality of State-Funded Higher Education provision. There are fears of the emergence of a two-tier HE system – public and private. This is clearly a very difficult tension to manage.
Governments are keen to widen access to Higher Education, to offer greater choice in courses, to safeguard quality, to increase the employability of graduates and to ensure that they are turning out globally competitive graduates. Increasingly, all of these noble objectives can not be delivered by publicly-funded institutions alone – hence the proliferation in TNE partnerships, both public, private and a number of innovative public-private joint ventures. The world is changing fast and governments acknowledge the need to re-engineer their Higher Education systems to meet the needs of the global economy.
Next week the British Council have invited a senior delegation, led by the Hon. Minister for Higher Education, S B Dissanayake, to participate in these debates and discuss other global issues facing international higher education at the annual British Council Going Global Conference in London. The Minister, Vice-Chancellors, members of the University Grants Commission and other officials will join more than 1,000 delegates from over 50 countries at the Going Global international conference. The delegation will give a presentation at the conference on the emerging vision for Higher Education in Sri Lanka at a session titled “The pearl of the Indian Ocean is shining again: Sri Lanka’s Changing Higher Education Landscape – from vision to reality” The Minister will hold bi-lateral talks with his UK counterpart, David Willetts MP during the visit.
A separate session has also been organised for the delegation to share experience around quality assurance systems and approaches with the QAA. Notwithstanding the need to keep a watchful eye on quality, transnational education is here to stay as countries seek ways of expanding provision and widening access to higher education to meet the ever increasing demand.
In the face of successful growth, then, although the challenges of transnational education programmes can appear daunting for host countries as well as state universities, there appears to be general agreement that there are real long term benefits.
\ Transnational higher education has become a major global phenomenon, and is predicted to grow significantly over the next twenty years. It has the potential to offer important benefits to students, local and foreign partners, and host and source countries.
- Tony Reilly, British Council Sri Lanka Country Director |
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