91app

Professor Emerita Mary Stiasny retired from her position as Pro-Vice Chancellor for International Teaching and Learning at the 91app in 2024, having served the University and its institutions with distinction for almost thirty years. In his brief introduction, CODE Fellow Alan Tait praised the ‘wisdom and humanity’ that she had shown throughout her long career: a quality that he said would be bound to come over during her lecture.

Mary thanked Alan and CODE for the invitation to speak at ‘one of [her] favourite conferences’, and introduced her theme more precisely as ‘the internationalisation of higher education, or international higher education and transnational education (TNE)’. The latter concept refers specifically to any programme of education located in a country other than that where the awarding institution is based, and it can take many forms, including but not restricted to distance-based education. It is not a new phenomenon, and examining its past and present must be key to shaping its future. As we do so, we must keep our students at the heart of our discussions.

The past

There have always been travelling scholars. During what we in Europe call the medieval period, people travelled for religious reasons and along trade routes, but many – admittedly, almost all wealthy men – also travelled to different countries to learn each other’s systems of knowledge and thought. Travel for study was only institutionalised and made a bit more widely available in the nineteenth century, and by the middle of that century the 91app was providing a form of transnational education.

Mary explained that in 2008 she and Natalia Jones had been asked to produce a booklet, Mobility Matters, to celebrate ’s fortieth anniversary. This set out the growth and maturation of international higher education in the UK and beyond over those forty years. She summarised that timeline briefly, extending it backwards to the 1960s and forwards to the present day:

• The 1960s: a time of limited control or oversight of international education; there were technical assistance programmes and some scholarships, but institutions essentially worked alone.
• The 1970s: overseas fees began to increase and more restrictive immigration policies were introduced, but there were special programmes for student exchanges, and new disciplines including international studies and peace studies were introduced.
• The 1980s: Margaret Thatcher’s government took the cap off overseas students’ fees; a network of student advisors was set up, scholarships continued and the first student recruitment fairs – mainly run by organisations like the British Council – were held in countries where it was felt there would be interest in UK University degrees.
• The 1990s: there was a substantial increase in international student recruitment with intense competition between English-speaking host countries. Universities began to establish branch campuses overseas, with Nottingham and Southampton among the first UK institutions involved. Typically, the curriculum was expected to replicate that in the host institution.
• The 2000s: the number of overseas students in the UK increased greatly as a result of government policy despite continuing controversies over visas and immigration issues, and European universities started offering courses in English.
• The 2010s: TNE was seen as a way of avoiding visa issues, making HE affordable to students from lower-income countries, and helping those countries avoid brain drain. It began to be more closely regulated, and there was a much closer focus on students and the student experience.
• The 2020s: the pandemic led to an even greater global focus on TNE, with a concentration on the quality of provision and students’ progression into employment.

Mary welcomes some of the recent developments, particularly the emphasis on student experience, while recognising that the emphasis on employability is more complex. Overseas ‘branch campuses’ of UK universities must play a role in building local capacity, not just market a commodity.

The present

As the world of international higher education has matured, policy decisions have become more important. Developments in the 1980s and since, and particularly the ‘marketisation’ of higher education in the 2010s, have caused overseas students’ fees to soar and fee differentials between courses and between home and overseas students to increase. Overseas students are now often charged exorbitant rates, and TNE, in which students stay in their home countries, can be an affordable alternative, particularly for students from countries with volatile currencies.

Many overseas students are still supported by scholarships offered by foundations, philanthropic bodies and the universities themselves. One well-known example is the scheme, which provides opportunities for students to travel between Commonwealth countries to study. However, nothing lasts forever, and just recently, the US State Department has suddenly paused its provision of grant funding for study abroad. No one can tell how long this situation will last or whether other bodies or even other countries will curtail their own schemes. Visa and immigration issues continue to perplex universities and their students. In the UK, for example, there has been a debate for many years over whether overseas students should count in the immigration figures.

Worldwide, there is an enormous difference in the ways in which regulatory bodies deal with transnational education. Some countries’ regulations do not cover it at all, and in the UK, even, the uses different metrics to monitor the progress of transnational students.

In an increasingly marketised and competitive world, UK universities have to work hard to attract international and transnational students: they can’t expect students to ‘just come’. The British Council and international bodies like have become hugely important in supporting the UK’s higher educational institutions in promoting themselves overseas. The first Going Global conference for UK universities and other stakeholders was held in 2004 with the support of the British Council, as a direct copy of earlier international conferences run by IDP. It was at that first conference that Lord Kinnock, then British Council chair, asked whether students from the Global South should have to pay a fortune to study in the Global North, and thus, perhaps, setting the scene for the current expansion of TNE.

At the same conference almost twenty years later, the British Council launched a new strategy for TNE in 2023-24 that set out four key actions and intentions:

• To contribute better data and insight into TNE
• To create an enabling environment and promote the quality of UK TNE internationally
• To influence the removal of barriers and promote new opportunities for TNE
• To support the contribution of TNE to local education systems and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.

That British Council strategy paper stated that, in 2023, about 600,000 students were working towards UK qualifications while based overseas, with the majority studying for a first degree: the most represented regions are Asia with about half these students and Europe with over 15%. Thirty percent are studying via ‘distance, flexible or distributed learning’. It is worth noting from the same report that the greatest increase in numbers came in 2020-21: this is not surprising as it was at the height of the pandemic, but the box, once opened, has stayed open: students have realised that TNE is possible and will work for them, and, to some extent at least, universities and regulators have had to catch up.

The future

The same British Council strategy document highlights a number of innovative models of learning that are increasingly being taken up by students, universities and regulators. These include MOOCs, virtual mobility, work-integrated learning, personalised learning, and micro- (or even nano-) credentials. None of these are completely new, but their combination indicates an increasing emphasis on flexibility. Using these, students can start and stop their learning at any time, when and where they wish and without losing credits gained elsewhere. This echoes the UK government’s wish to develop a stronger model of lifelong learning.

Furthermore, in the UK and internationally, advanced data analysis and evaluation models allow a stronger emphasis on the quality and rigour of lifelong learning provision, and, thus, a greater acceptance of these qualifications by regulatory authorities. This expansion should allow disadvantaged learners to access higher education more easily, but affordability remains a major concern. This is, perhaps self-evidently, most important in those countries that are most concerned about building their own capacity.

When the 91app first introduced what we now call TNE, in the mid-nineteenth century, exam papers were sent out to the partner institutions on steamships and returned for marking in the same way, with the whole process taking about six months. About 170 years later the technology is immeasurably different, and the University continues to mark the papers; even if they are now sent online rather than by steamship! The University’s core principles of quality, access and rigour, however, are unchanged. And our students remain at the heart of our provision, as they must always be. Mary illustrated this with examples of London University students who had been based on remote islands, in prison, in war-torn countries or as prisoners of war; and faced with natural disasters.

In concluding, Mary reflected on the importance of international education, particularly in insecure and volatile times like these. All international education, but particularly TNE because of its convenience, is ‘not a possibility, but essential’ but TNE must include true partnerships with partner institutions and countries, remain affordable for local students, and contribute to local capacity building.

Discussion

Alan thanked Mary for a fascinating and authoritative lecture and asked participants to discuss three ‘challenges’:

• Can providers maintain affordability for our students, and whose responsibility is this?
• Does the provision of TNE still contribute to capacity building where this is needed, or does it cut across genuine partnership working?
• At a time of rapidly expanding TNE, how can we continue to meet the concerns of regulatory bodies for quality and rigour?

Online delegates were asked to post answers to these and their other questions or comments on a padlet, and all delegates were invited to post and vote on questions using PollEverywhere. This activity led into a short, lively general discussion, again coordinated by Alan.

Much of the discussion focused on a single issue that was at least implied in the first two questions: how TNE providers can avoid any taint of colonialism. The first TNE providers in the UK, including London, had arisen during the British Empire, and links with Commonwealth countries remain strong and are formalised in, for example, the Commonwealth Scholarships. And some overseas curricula, for example in law, can be inappropriately UK-centric. Mary offered a few suggestions for minimising the risk: we should only set up provision when and where we have been invited to do so, and we should always work in partnership with local institutions.

There was a brief discussion of that perennial ‘hot potato’, AI, and here Mary came down on the side of the optimists. She remembered a similar controversy over the introduction of pocket calculators, when some thought that ‘people wouldn’t do calculations any more… and the world would come to an end’. If we can develop ways for students to use AI in ‘ethical, sensible and appropriate ways’, those techniques could become as ubiquitous and helpful as calculators are today. And others mentioned the opportunities for experience and personal development that transnational students, based in their home countries, must lose. This is undoubtedly true for many, but others, through poverty, oppression (as with women in some Middle Eastern countries) or simple lack of opportunity, can only experience education locally.

These are all challenging questions, but they are not impossible ones to answer, and they must be engaged with, or we will risk losing or failing our students.