American Council on Education

by

U.S. branch campuses abroad: results of a targeted survey

Editor’s note: this entry was kindly contributed by Madeleine Green (pictured to the right), Vice President, International Initiatives, American Council on Education (ACE).  Madeleine Green leads internationalization efforts at ACE and its Center for International Initiatives (CII). CII offers programs and services that support and enhance internationalization on U.S. campuses. It also works with international partners on higher education issues that have a global impact, conducts research on internationalization, and advocates on international issues. Green was the recipient of the 2010 Charles Klasek Award of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) for outstanding service to the field of international education.

Madeleine Green’s entry can be viewed in the context of ongoing debates about how attempts to develop relatively deep forms of ‘internationalization’ (from an institutional perspective) complement and contradict state-led territorial development agendas in ‘host’ nations (or, to be more exact, discursive-material city-regions). This is a remarkably under-researched topic despite the notable increase in media coverage of the phenomenon.  We are happy to post this entry to further thinking about the branch campus topic, and welcome further guest entries. Some additional ‘open access’ resources on this topic include this series of brief articles in International Higher Education (2010)

A longer version of Madeleine Green’s entry is available here.

Kris Olds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interest in and speculation about U.S. off-shore campuses and programs are growing by the day. The prospect of India opening its borders to foreign providers has unleashed speculation about India as the next frontier for U.S. campuses wanting to establish operations abroad. At the same time, the financial problems in Dubai have led to speculation that the ability of governments to provide generous subsidies to foreign operations is fragile and unpredictable. The terrain is shifting and operations abroad vary tremendously, depending on the nation.

There has been little research, however, on how U.S. institutions actually go about the business of establishing and operating branch campuses, how these operations differ by region, or the identities of the students and faculty. In an effort to fill this knowledge gap, ACE began collecting information on U.S. branch campuses abroad in 2006. Drawing on an initial assessment of the range of U.S. branches abroad, ACE assembled 11 leaders from U.S. institutions offering programs abroad and sponsoring branch campuses for a roundtable in January 2008. The meeting provided depth to ACE’s knowledge into the theoretical and practical challenges associated with establishing a branch overseas. As a beginning step toward a wider breadth of understanding the universe of U.S. branch campuses abroad, in 2009 ACE fielded a targeted survey to collect more detailed information on the structure of branch campuses.

In response to a survey sent to 88 institutions operating a total of 197 branches campuses, 20 institutions submitted information on 40 branch campuses. Sixteen (40 percent) of the branch campuses were in Asia, 15 (38 percent) in Europe, 7 (18 percent) in the Middle East and North Africa.  The results are supported by information drawn from Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses, a national survey of 2,746 institutions conducted in 2006, as well as ACE’s ongoing dialogue on this topic with campus leaders.

The survey used the following definition of branch campus:

  • The branch campus rents or owns educational facilities (this could include a library, laboratories, classrooms, and/or faculty and staff office space) in a different country from the U.S. parent institution.
  • The branch campus offers courses in more than one field of study leading to a degree.
  • The degree bears the parent institution name (either alone or with a partner institution).
  • The branch campus is where students take the majority of their courses and finish their degree.
  • The branch campus offers mainly face-to-face instruction.
  • The branch campus has permanent administrative staff.

Conclusions

There is no predominant model. ACE research on U.S. branch campuses abroad reveals a wide variety of approaches. Some campuses are fully funded by the host government, some receive partial support, and some receive none. According to the preliminary results of the 2009 ACE targeted survey of U.S. branch campuses abroad, some campuses offer only undergraduate programs, some only graduate, and some offer both, and the faculty were nearly equally likely to be employed by the branch campus as the parent institution. Institutions with branch campuses abroad reported that the development of a branch campus is shaped by many factors, including needs and regulations of the host country, availability of partners, and strengths of the U.S. parent institution. Additionally, those that have set up campuses in different countries indicated that each experience was different, and although there are lessons to be learned from prior experience, the initiatives differ from one another.

Regional differences exist. The data showed some regional patterns. Branch campuses in Europe were more likely to have been founded before 2000, while those in other parts of the world have been established more recently. Faculty at European branch campuses were likely to be drawn from that region, while faculty at Asian and Middle Eastern branch campuses were more likely to be from the United States or countries other than the host country.

Branch campuses in the Middle East were more likely to receive support from the host government than those with branch campuses elsewhere. States such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have made huge investments to attract foreign institutions to meet the demand for higher education in their country and in the region, to increase their national capacity for research, and to advance as knowledge societies. Thus, their willingness to provide financial support for U.S. and other institutions has helped them meet their national goals. Most European nations, on the other hand, are not experiencing rapid growth in demand and have well-established higher education systems with sufficient capacity to educate their domestic students. They were, therefore, more likely to use traditional institutional partnerships to enhance their teaching and research.

U.S. institutions show intense interest in Asia, where there is tremendous demand for higher education. Asian nations are unlikely to provide operating revenue to branch campuses, although they do provide other types of support. Nearly all the branch campuses in this region received support in the form of facilities. In addition, the U.S. parent institution keeps a close association with the Asian branch campus: The majority serve as the employers of the faculty and about half reported that that the majority of their branch campus faculty were from the United States. These findings suggest that these institutions are exercising quality control by selecting and employing U.S. faculty.

The absence of branch campuses in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America in this survey was notable. The 2006 Mapping Internationalization national survey indicated that 7 percent of respondents had branch campuses in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) and 3 percent were operating programs in South Africa. Although little information is available, we can hypothesize that even though the demand for higher education is great in Africa and Latin America, the pool of students able to pay the fees required by foreign institutions is small, and the ability and/or willingness of African governments to provide assistance is equally lacking. Regardless of reason, Africa does not seem to be fertile ground for branch campuses.

ACE’s research suggests a need for further inquiry into the future of branch campuses. The effect of the worldwide economic downturn on both supply and demand is uncertain. It remains to be seen whether students will be more likely to seek a foreign education at home. If the demand (and the market) continue to be so great in Asia and other regions, branch campuses could not only flourish but also increase. Such a scenario would suggest the growth of branch campuses, perhaps at the expense of international mobility. In another scenario, economic recession may make a foreign education unaffordable for many students and their families, even in one’s home country or region.

There also are unknowns on the supply side. It may be that U.S. institutions battling financial issues will be less inclined to venture abroad. Even if support for such initiatives is available, institutions may be deterred by the requirements of time and effort, not to mention the inevitable hidden costs. Faced with uncertain financial circumstances, higher education leaders, boards, and legislatures may feel that now is not the moment to chart unknown courses. On the other hand, they could decide that these times present opportunities that should not be refused.

Madeleine F. Green

by

Are we witnessing a key moment in the reworking of the global higher education & research landscape?

ACEissuebriefOver the last several weeks more questions about the changing nature of the relative position of national higher education and research systems have emerged.  These questions have often been framed around the notion that the US higher education system (assuming there is one system) might be in relative decline, that flagship UK universities (national champions?) like Oxford are unable to face challenges given the constraints facing them, and that universities from ’emerging’ regions (East and South Asia, in particular) are ‘rising’ due to the impact of continual or increasing investment in higher education and research.

Select examples of such contributions include this series in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

and these articles associated with the much debated THE-QS World University Rankings 2009:

EvidenceUKcoverThe above articles and graphics in US and UK higher education media outlets were preceded by this working paper:

a US report titled:

and one UK report titled:

There are, of course, many other calls for increased awareness, or deep and critical reflection.  For example, back in June 2009, four congressional leaders in the USA:

asked the National Academies to form a distinguished panel to assess the competitive position of the nation’s research universities. “America’s research universities are admired throughout the world, and they have contributed immeasurably to our social and economic well-being,” the Members of Congress said in a letter delivered today. “We are concerned that they are at risk.”….

The bipartisan congressional group asked that the Academies’ panel answer the following question: “What are the top ten actions that Congress, state governments, research universities, and others could take to assure the ability of the American research university to maintain the excellence in research and doctoral education needed to help the United States compete, prosper, and achieve national goals for health, energy, the environment, and security in the global community of the 21st century?”

Recall that the US National Academies produced a key 2005 report (Rising Above the Gathering Storm) “which in turn was the basis for the “America COMPETES Act.” This Act created a blueprint for doubling funding for basic research, improving the teaching of math and science, and taking other steps to make the U.S. more competitive.” On this note see our 16 June 2008 entry titled ‘Surveying US dominance in science and technology for the Secretary of Defense‘.

RisingStormTaken together, these contributions are but a sample of the many expressions of concern being expressed in 2009 in the Global North (especially the US & UK) about the changing geography of the global higher education and research landscape.

These types of articles and reports shed light, but can also raise anxiety levels (as they are sometimes designed to do).  The better of them attempt to ensure that the angsts being felt in the long dominant Global North are viewed with a critical eye, and that people realize that this is not a “zero-sum game” (as Philip Altbach puts it in the Chronicle’s ‘America Falling: Longtime Dominance in Education Erodes‘). For example, the shifting terrain of global research productivity is partially a product of increasing volumes of collaboration and human mobility across borders, while key global challenges are just that – global in nature and impossible to attend to unless global teams of relatively equitable capacities are put together. Moreover, greater transnational education and research activity and experience arguably facilitates a critical disposition towards the most alarmist material, while concurrently reinforcing the point that the world is changing, albeit very unevenly, and that there are also many positive changes associated with a more dispersed higher education and research landscape.

We’ll do our best to post links to new global mappings like these as they emerge in the future.  Please ensure you let us know what is being published, be it rigorous, critical, analytical, alarmist, self-congratulatory, etc., and we’ll profile it on GlobalHigherEd.  The production of discourses on this new global higher education and research landscape is a key component of the process of change itself.  Thus we need to be concerned not just with the content of such mappings, but also the logics underlying the production of such mappings, and the institutional relations that bring such mappings into view for consumption.

Kris Olds

by

Surveying US dominance in science and technology for the Secretary of Defense

The global higher education and research landscape is a fast changing one at this point in history. Amongst many indicators we have increasingly powerful players (e.g., Kaplan, Thomson Reuters), new interregional and global imaginaries starting to generate broad effects (e.g., via the global dimensions of the Bologna Process), a series of coordinated multi-university attempts to create action on what some stakeholders deem “global challenges” (e.g., see The Global Colloquium of University Presidents), and a recent US-based attempt to create ostensibly global higher education action for global development.

On this latter initiative, deemed the Higher Education Summit for Global Development, I can’t help but think that the cost to organize and operate such a ‘summit’ was significant when compared to the related announcement of “$1 million [644,000 euro] to fund 20 partnership-planning grants of $50,000 to plan long-term collaborations between African and U.S. institutions of higher education“. Money of that scale is characteristically snatched from a dormant account inside some department to produce a ‘deliverable’ and seems somewhat incommensurate (in material and symbolic terms) with the stated ambition of the event, even if it is just the marker of a new phase of action.

The pace of globally-framed higher education and research change was abundantly clear to me last week when I was in Brussels (pictured to the left) meeting with a wide variety of informed and creative stakeholders; stakeholders who are actively creating elements of this new global higher ed/research architecture. The combination of insight and resources was impressive, and another reminder of what happens when states focus on building intellectual infrastructure for the medium to long term.

In this context, today’s entry briefly profiles one new contribution to challenging dominant views on the status quo of thinking about aspects of the globalization of higher education and research, though from the other side of the Atlantic – in the USA.

On 12 June the Rand Corporation released a major report titled U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology. The associated press release can be accessed here, and a summary Research Brief here.

This new report is a 2008 “companion report” to the 2007 collection, Perspectives on U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology, in which we flagged the Rand Corporation’s inclusion of one chapter by Jonathon Adams, a UK-based private consultant whose firm (Evidence Ltd) provides services in relation to the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology presents findings that challenge notions of a slide in the dominance of the United States in the global science and technology landscape, especially with respect to research. In summary fashion, Rand notes:

Is the United States in danger of losing its competitive edge in science and technology (S&T)? This concern has been raised repeatedly since the end of the Cold War, most recently in a wave of reports in the mid-2000s suggesting that globalization and the growing strength of other nations in S&T, coupled with inadequate U.S. investments in research and education, threaten the United States’ position of leadership in S&T. Galama and Hosek [the Rand authors] examine these claims and contrast them with relevant data, including trends in research and development investment; information on the size, composition, and pay of the U.S. science and engineering workforce; and domestic and international education statistics. They find that the United States continues to lead the world in science and technology and has kept pace or grown faster than other nations on several measurements of S&T performance; that it generally benefits from the influx of foreign S&T students and workers; and that the United States will continue to benefit from the development of new technologies by other nations as long as it maintains the capability to acquire and implement such technologies. However, U.S. leadership in science and technology must not be taken for granted, and Galama and Hosek conclude with recommendations to strengthen the U.S. S&T enterprise, including measures to facilitate the immigration of highly skilled labor and improve the U.S. education system.

Coverage of the report is now emerging in outlets like the Economist, in the general media, and in the blogosphere (e.g., see this critique of the Rand message in the Computing Research Policy blog)

U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology is also noteworthy for it is produced by Rand for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), a relatively sprawling institution as is evident in this organizational diagram:

As the inside page to the report puts it:

The research described in this report was prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The research was conducted in the RAND National Defense Research Institute [NDRI], a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the OSD, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community under Contract W74V8H-06-C-0002.

The logic of the OSD funding NDRI-produced research likely relates to the US defense establishment’s concern about emerging science and technology (and research) ‘footprints’ of powers like China, India, and Europe vis a vis intra-US capacities to educate, produce knowledge, and have this knowledge disseminated (and generate effects) at a range of scales and via a variety of channels. Yet the report also seeks to use data and analytical narratives to prick holes in the emerging taken-for-granted assumptions that the era of American hegemony, with respect to global knowledge production, is over. It reminds me, a little, of the informed testimony of Michael S. Teitelbaum, Vice President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, on 6 November 2007 before the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives. Finally, the report is very clear in flagging the dependency of US science and technology capacity, and the US’ global research presence/impact, upon highly educated foreigners.

In an overall sense, then, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology could be read as a detailed and insightful contribution to ongoing deliberations about the scale of US science and technology might, and an effort to reshape the contours of a critically important debate. I’m not sure if it could be classified as a contribution to thinking about “war by other means”, but rather as a reflection of a “new threat environment ” where thinking and analysis focuses on:

[h]ow and in what way do new challenges–from terrorists, insurgents, weapons of mass destruction, and the proliferation of technology–that the United States faces at home and abroad color America´s definition of and approach to national security? How will changes in the international economic, diplomatic, political, and alliance environments affect U.S. interests and capabilities? How will those changes and threats–from states, non–states, and other traditional and non–traditional sources– affect the United States´ ability to engage and project its power?

Regardless of the logics behind it, the report is thought provoking, laden with data and well designed graphic images, and is clearly written.

Finally, readership. I can imagine the current Secretary of Defense quite enjoying this read given that he was most recently President of Texas A&M University, and “also served on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Council on Education” and “the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges”. I am not as sure about the previous one, though. If he is still on the OSD mailing list perhaps he’ll be perusing the text for indicators of the declining health of “old Europe”!

Kris Olds

29 June update: This letter to the Economist (26 June 2008) is worth reading:

SIR – Referring to the conclusions of a RAND report on research and development in science and technology, you claimed that fears that America is losing its competitive edge in innovation are “overblown” (“What crisis?”, June 14th). Your evidence is that “America has lots of sources of R&D spending: federal money accounted for only $86 billion of the $288 billion it spent on R&D in 2004” and that “spending on the life sciences is increasing rapidly, a reasonable bet on the future.” The important point to be made here is that the composition of American R&D has changed markedly over the years.

Federal support for basic research at universities in the physical sciences and engineering—the type of research most directly coupled to technological innovation—has withered relative to spending on research in the life sciences and R&D carried out by industry. The increase in privately financed product-development (often the D in R&D) and biomedical research are both good, but neglecting basic research investments of the type that gave us the internet, solid-state electronics and medical imaging is not a recipe for future success.

Given that it typically takes 15 years for new ideas dreamed up in the laboratory to become commercial, America may be losing the technology race even while seeming to remain on top. At the very least, America’s relative position in the world is slipping, which bodes ill for the future economic standing of the United States.

George Scalise
President
Semiconductor Industry Association
San Jose, California

by

Interregionalism and the globalization of higher education: new Euro-Asia initiatives

One of the interesting aspects of change in higher education systems is how they are being denationalized; reshaped, as it were, by forces and actors that are thinking at, and operating at, scales other than the national. In social science terms (e.g., see the work of Neil Brenner) this is often deemed the “relativization of scale”; the process whereby actors operating at the global scale, the inter-regional (e.g., Europe-Asia) scale, the supranational regional (e.g., European, Asian) scale, the national scale (e.g., Germany), the subnational regional (e.g., Silicon Valley) scale, and the urban scale, all come to play increasingly important roles in shaping a “multiscalar” development process. See, for example, these two recent reports by the European University Association (EUA) and the OECD on higher education for regional development in a globalizing era:

euacover.jpg

oecdcover.jpg

In this case we have a regional stakeholder organization (the EUA), and a multilateral organization (the OECD), both framing development processes simultaneously at the urban, regional, and global scales, with the national scale present, though clearly not dominant. Don’t forget, as well, that the OECD is a creation of member states, and its global thinking is therefore animated by, and mediated by, the nation-state. This is a point Saskia Sassen has insightfully driven home, most recently in Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press, 2006).

On the higher education and research policy front one emerging phenomenon worth taking note of is interregional dialogue. For example there is a now a decade long series of formal Transatlantic Dialogues, anchored by the American Council on Education (ACE), the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), and the European University Association (EUA). These meetings are always framed by ‘global’ thinking, but focus on achieving interregional objectives and enhanced understandings of what is going on on both sides of the Atlantic.

In this context the EUA announced, on 21 February, that it is partnering with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Netherlands Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education (Nuffic), to “establish an EU-Asia Higher Education Platform for European and Asian academics and policy makers”. This initiative is being facilitated by the European Commission’s Asia Link programme. As the EUA puts it, the purpose of the two-year project is to:

  • Provide a means for enhancing information exchange, dialogue, and cooperation in higher education and research between the two regions;
  • Develop best practices for institutional development and cooperation, and foster mobility of students and academics between the two regions;
  • Draw attention to the role and situation of universities in developing countries.

Throughout the course of 2008-9, a series of workshops and round tables in Asia and Europe will be organised, targeting institutional development and cooperation issues. Amongst the themes that are expected to be covered will be higher education governance and management, decentralisation, cooperation in graduate education, and interregional and inter-institutional cooperation in quality assurance.

While this is a complement to other forms of engagement also underway, and it is only targeted at parts of Asia, it is a noteworthy one.

First, and most importantly, there is much to learn in Asia about European developments over the last ten years given that Europe is grappling with the ‘modernization’ of its higher education system at a regional scale, though in a manner that blurs scales of action and intent, and takes into account national sensitivities and differential capacities for statecraft.

Second, it differs from the nature of North America-Asia and Australasia-Asia engagement, both of which tend to be relatively more person to person (e.g., the Australian Scholarships, the Fulbright awards) or event-oriented (e.g., student recruitment fairs, the US University Presidents’ Delegation to Southeast Asia).

In contrast, the EU-Asia Higher Education Platform is a truly post-national/interregional initiative, of a programmatic nature, and with an associated development agenda that focuses on systemic change.

In addition, and tying back to the start of this entry, note the presence of the nation-state in enabling EU-Asia relations to be forged, both directly and indirectly. This initiative is one that will also inevitably be forced to grapple with huge national variations in Asian higher education systems, and the lack of institutional capacity to operate at a regional scale in Asia, with respect to higher education. Yet while nation-states in Asia have not (yet) prioritized the construction of a regional higher education imaginary, it is only a matter of time given the structural forces that are reshaping Asian societies and economies. The complexion of the changes that will eventually emerge, and the nature of the intra-Asia and Asia-Other dialogue(s) facilitating them, have really yet to be determined.

Kris Olds