International universities: Long-distance relationships

Colleges and teaching-led universities call for more recognition of their overseas ventures

Five vice-chancellors accompanied Gordon Brown across the globe this time last year on a mission to foster stronger higher education links with India and China. But the trip seems to have done little for relations with some of their colleagues back in the UK.

The fact that the prime minister took the leaders of five research-led universities with him, rather sthan a group reflecting a wider mix, clearly still rankles with some of their counterparts in the teaching-led universities.

That episode typifies a level of ignorance in the government and civil service, according to Professor Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire and chair of Million+, a higher education thinktank subscribed to by 28 post-1992 universities.

"We often find that ministers don't recognise fully the range of international activities that universities are involved with," he says. "And in particular there is maybe a perception that only certain universities are engaged."

Nottingham Ningbo

He says that whenever he brings up the topic of "transnational education" - the growing phenomenon of UK institutions running courses overseas - the immediate response from politicians or officials is: "Oh yes, we know all about that". And then they mention University of Nottingham Ningbo.

Nottingham was the first foreign university to establish a campus in China. "The Nottingham partnership is very famous, and rightly so, but that's just a few thousand students," Ebdon says. "The concern after that trip to China and India was that it only reflected links with the most selective universities.

"What we are trying to do is remind ministers of the range of activity and to convey to them that the idea that you can supply the Chinese market from a handful of universities is laughable."

Now the newer universities may have what they need to get their message across. Today, at a conference in London entitled International Higher Education Partnerships, Million+ will unveil a report that shows for the first time, it claims, the range and richness of the international partnerships in which its 28 subscriber universities - 24 in England, four in Scotland - are engaged.

It was already known, the report says, that these universities were between them teaching more than 70,000 international students on their UK campuses. The survey therefore focused on the range and extent of international partnerships, and looked at transnational education in particular.

This chimes with the second phase of the Prime Minister's Initiative (PMI), a programme launched in 1999 as a five-year strategy to increase the number of international students in the UK. PMI2 began in 2006. It aims to boost the numbers of overseas students by a further 100,000 - 70,000 of them to higher and the rest to further education. It also intends to beef up the numbers of partnerships between institutions in the UK and abroad, and lists 24 countries where it wants particular efforts made.

But however clear these aims are, the UK is not best geared to achieve them, says Pam Tatlow, chief executive of Million+. "In comparison to Australia, the UK still lacks a comprehensive approach to international HE," she says. "This has resulted in a default position that has reinforced presumptions and hierarchies."

The government, its agencies and universities themselves need a co-ordinated strategy if the UK is to build on the successes revealed in the survey, she says.

The University of Bedford set up one of the first transnational programmes 10 years ago with the Chinese Agricultural College in Beijing, says Ebdon. Since then, the survey informing the Million+ report has identified a broad spread of partnerships for teaching, knowledge transfer and research in more than 70 countries. Its compilers estimate that more than 50,000 non-UK students are studying on higher education-level programmes overseas, yielding an estimated £47m.

"We also estimate that the inflow of international students to the universities is bringing at least £0.6bn to their local communities," the report says. Overall, says Ebdon, the direct benefits to the UK economy of international education are estimated at £5bn.

"There's no way you could make that £5bn if it were only the Russell group universities involved," he says. "Take China, with its thousands of universities. There's no way that a partnership of a very small group of universities can really offer benefit to China or, for that matter, offer the same kind of benefits to UK plc."

In a curious echo of this, further education colleges are arguing that the university sector on its own is not going to gain maximum benefit for the UK from transnational operations - a view supported by the British Council.

Under-appreciated

Like the teaching-led universities, colleges feel that the extent of their global involvement has been under-measured and under-appreciated by the government. "The emphasis has always been on universities and international students," says Geoff Pine, principal of Greenwich College and chair of the British Council's vocational education advisory forum.

Only in the last three or four years has the British Council woken up to the strength of demand for vocational education in developing economies, he says. The Association of Colleges is due to publish a report shortly showing for the first time the true extent of UK further education's international operations.

Universities in emerging economies often run the sorts of courses that would be found in FE colleges in the UK, says Julia Smith, the British Council's regional adviser on vocational education. But, she adds: "The customer might say, 'we're only prepared to deal with a university', but the university doesn't necessarily deliver the package in the end." For this reason, universities should be encouraged to form partnerships with colleges, Smith says.

A collaboration between a UK university and college could more closely match the demand from an institution in an emerging economy than either on their own, she says. "If the customer needs one institution that teaches everything from low-level technical stuff right through to master's degree-level or a PhD, there is no one institution over here that can do it," she says. "A partnership might be the answer."

Pine says one thing that better FE/HE partnerships will not be able to mend is the damage done by the "points-based system" that now governs the entry of migrants to the UK from countries outside the European Union. This means that anyone wanting to come here to study level 1 or 2 courses (the most basic) will not be able to rack up enough points to qualify for a visa. Points effectively begin when people apply to do level 3 courses (an A-level or its vocational equivalent), he says.

Peter Kingston