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research-article2015
JSIXXX10.1177/1028315315625148Journal of Studies in International Education

Special Issue Editorial

Journal of Studies in International Education
2016, Vol. 20(1) 3­–7
Transnational Higher © 2015 European Association for
International Education
Education in the 21st Century Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/1028315315625148
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Olawale lives in Nigeria and is enrolled in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
provided by Harvard University. Akmal lives in Malaysia and studies in the evenings
at his local college, a private institute, following a degree program awarded by an
Australian university. Smita is from India but she lives in Dubai, where her father
works as a doctor. She studies at the international branch campus of a British univer-
sity. All of these are examples of transnational higher education. Simply put, the term
transnational education refers to study programs where learners are located in a coun-
try other than the one in which the awarding institution is based.
In the latter half of the 20th century, the two most popular forms of transnational
education were partner-supported delivery and distance education. Since the 1990s,
the increased number of transnational students taking online programs has been facili-
tated by higher levels of computer ownership and access to the Internet. Although a
handful of American universities established international branch campuses between
the 1950s and 1990s, it was not until the start of the 21st century that the pace of devel-
opment of these campuses accelerated. In August 2015, there were 235 international
branch campuses operating worldwide and a further 23 were planned or under devel-
opment (Cross-Border Education Research Team, 2015). Although the United States
is the largest source country of international branch campuses, the United Kingdom,
Australia, France, and Russia are also major players in the transnational higher educa-
tion market.
Although countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom provide official statis-
tics relating to transnational higher education, such data are not available on a global
basis. Hence, it is not possible to know exactly how many students are enrolled in trans-
national higher education programs worldwide. In 2012-2013, 63 U.K. higher education
institutions had 323,730 active enrollments on 2,785 transnational programs, which gen-
erated a total of £495.8m in revenue (Mellors-Bourne, Fielden, Kemp, Middlehurst, &
Woodfield, 2014). In the same year, there were 110,116 students enrolled on Australian
transnational higher education programs, which represented 33.5% of the international
students in Australian higher education (Australian Department for Education, 2014).
Although the early players in the transnational higher education market originated in
Anglophone countries, the last few years have seen many institutions from non-Anglo-
phone countries entering this market (Wilkins & Urbanovič, 2014).
Many governments globally have been keen to encourage the growth of transna-
tional higher education, as this presents an opportunity to expand higher education
capacity at no, or relatively little, cost to the public budget. Other potential benefits
4 Journal of Studies in International Education 20(1)

include improved skills levels among the labor force, increased innovation, reduced
brain drain, lower unemployment, higher gross domestic product (GDP), and reduced
currency outflows, resulting from fewer nationals studying abroad. Some countries—
notably Malaysia, Singapore, and the Emirate of Dubai—have worked hard to position
themselves as regional higher education hubs that attract incoming international
students.
China is another country that has been keen to encourage transnational higher edu-
cation. For example, Article 3 of the 2003 Regulations of the People’s Republic of
China on Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools encourages Chinese
higher education institutions to cooperate and form partnerships with high-quality for-
eign institutions. In June 2015, a total of 64 transnational higher education institutions
were operating in China, offering more than 1,000 programs (Chinese Ministry of
Education, 2015a, 2015b). In terms of student enrollments, two of the most successful
international branch campuses globally are located in China. According to the institu-
tions’ websites, in 2014-2015, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University had more than
8,000 registered students and the University of Nottingham Ningbo had more than
6,000 students, including more than 100 on doctoral programs. At least a further 1,000
foreign institutions have some other kind of collaborative agreement in China.
China’s impressive economic growth and the unsatisfied demand for higher educa-
tion make the country an attractive location for transnational operations. However, the
establishment of international branch campuses is not permitted unless undertaken
with a local institution. Although the Ministry of Education (and its predecessor, the
State Education Commission) issued Regulations in 1995, 2003, and 2004, the spe-
cific selection criteria used to grant approval for the establishment of a transnational
campus have never been explicitly stated. In this special issue, He (2016) attempts to
identify the policy changes of the Chinese government between 1995 and 2004, which
potentially provides useful findings for foreign institutions considering or intending to
open a campus in China. He concludes that transnational campuses are more likely to
be approved if the foreign university is highly ranked, if the foreign university is affili-
ated with a Chinese institution rather than taking legal person status, and if it offers
programs in subjects that contribute to the country’s industrial development, such as
information technology, science, and engineering.
Wilkins and Huisman (2012) used institutional theory to explain how regulative,
normative, and cultural structures and processes influence the transnational strategies
of higher education institutions. It is the legislation, rules, and regulations that com-
prise the regulative frame that likely has the most influence over institutional decision
making. In another of this special issue’s contributions, Amaral, Tavares, Cardoso, and
Sin (2016) analyze how different contexts and levels of regulation in three Portuguese-
speaking countries influence the transnational activities of higher education institu-
tions with different organizational identities. Amaral et al. found that normative forces
and a high degree of isomorphism led public universities to shun transnational activi-
ties such as franchising and international branch campuses. In contrast, the newer
public polytechnics, with their malleable identities, were more prepared to operate
Special Issue Editorial 5

abroad and cope with the different regulatory frames in different (Portuguese-speaking)
countries.
The diverse sets of regulative, normative, and cultural structures and processes that
exist in different countries each present institutions offering transnational education
with a unique set of challenges and risks. In this special issue, Healey (2016) reports
the results of a qualitative study into the “lived experiences” of branch campus manag-
ers in China, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates. It was found that these manag-
ers have to deal with alien commercial and cultural contexts, and that the biggest
challenge facing them is satisfying the competing demands of a range of internal and
external stakeholders. Another interesting finding was that few of the managers at
international branch campuses had previous management experience at their institu-
tion’s home country campus. Healey concludes that institutions should better prepare
and support the managers who run international branch campuses.
As transnational higher education has grown and spread globally during the last
two decades, so too has the interest in it among researchers. The fact that this special
issue attracted 22 submissions, the majority of which were interesting and of high
quality, provides evidence of this. In fact, in this special issue, Kosmützky and Putty
(2016) argue that a new thematic field of research has emerged, which encompasses
the terms transnational, offshore, cross-border, and borderless higher education. Using
these four terms as key search words, they identified a total of 1,931 publications.
In 2000, conference papers accounted for the highest number of publications in this
thematic field, but by 2010, journals had become the most popular means of dissemi-
nating research on transnational higher education, with the Journal of Studies in
International Education being the top journal for publishing full-length academic
style articles (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016). It is also interesting to note that in 2014, the
number of student theses concerned with research on transnational education was
greater than the total number of books and conference papers combined. If some of the
students researching transnational higher education proceed to pursue academic or
research careers, we could see a further mushrooming of research in this thematic field
in the years ahead.
Being a relatively new field of research, a proliferation of terms and definitions
have emerged in response to the new actors, new partnerships, new modes of delivery,
and new regulations that have appeared, which has caused a degree of confusion
among researchers. For example, the papers by Kosmützky and Putty (2016) and
Knight (2016) both note that researchers often use the terms transnational, offshore,
cross-border, and borderless higher education interchangeably, even though there are
important differences in meaning among these terms. In the fifth contribution to this
special issue, Knight argues the need for a common set of categories and definitions
for use by researchers and those compiling statistics on transnational higher education,
and she proposes a framework that includes descriptive notes to provide these. If
adopted, this framework might allow different modes of transnational higher educa-
tion activities to be examined in terms of similarities and differences for both applica-
tion and research purposes.
6 Journal of Studies in International Education 20(1)

Transnational higher education has evolved rapidly during the last two decades and
no one can know for sure how the sector will develop or change during the next 20
years. A survey conducted by the European Association for International Education
(EAIE) in 2015 found that opening new international branch campuses is now the low-
est internationalization priority among European universities, behind things such as
strategic partnerships and student mobility. This led some commentators to immedi-
ately conclude that international branch campus development has become unfashion-
able and that it is now past its peak. However, it might just be that the existing markets
are currently saturated, and as social, economic, and regulatory conditions change
globally, branch campus development might again accelerate, but in new countries and
regions such as India, Africa, and Latin America. Furthermore, we do not know how
MOOCs will change and whether they will gain popularity to the extent that they
affect physical enrollments. One thing is certain: There will be plenty of changes in
transnational higher education over the next 20 years to keep researchers busy.

Stephen Wilkins
Plymouth University, UK
Guest Editor

References
Amaral, A., Tavares, O., Cardoso, S., & Sin, C. (2016). Shifting institutional boundaries through
cross-border higher education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 20, 48-60.
Australian Department for Education. (2014). Research snapshot: Transnational education in
the higher education sector. Retrieved from https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/
Research-Snapshots/Documents/Transnational%20education_HE_2013.pdf
Cross-Border Education Research Team. (2015). Quick facts: Cross-Border Education
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Special Issue Editorial 7

Mellors-Bourne, R., Fielden, J., Kemp, N., Middlehurst, R., & Woodfield, S. (2014). The value
of transnational education to the UK (BIS Research Paper Number 194). London, England:
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