Changing Higher Education

British Universities in China: the Reality Beyond the Rhetoric

This is the title of a very interesting recent multi-authored discussion paper of Agora, a British think-tank for higher education. Although the paper is about British universities in China, most of what is said carries over directly to everyone’s globalization efforts worldwide. The director of Agora, Anna Fazackerley, provides a thought provoking introduction that provides an excellent context for the rest of the contributions. She points out the importance to institutions of thinking strategically about their globalization efforts, and having a clear understanding of what they hope to gain from them. She also emphasizes that the Chinese are in complete control of the process in their country, and that it is therefore critical to understand what China itself really wants when it allows foreign universities to enter. As part of the answer to this question, she suggests that "It is becoming apparent that one of the main uses of British universities to China will be their expertise in science and engineering".

The paper contains six contributions from individuals have considerable experience with higher education partnerships in China and throughout Asia.  Their comments are all well thought out, and quite thought provoking.  They point out the positives and negatives of working with China, and describe some of the sources of difficulties. The paper concludes with 3 case studies of different models of UK-China higher education partnerships. One of these is about the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (Interesting activity at the for-profit/non-profit interface: Laureate, Jan. 14, 2008).  The other two are the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus,  and the joint degree program between Queen Mary College, University of London and Beijing University of Posts and Technology. 

All this makes for very interesting and valuable reading.

The Senate keeps up the pressure

In How higher education will contribute to greater access I picked up a theme of earlier posts - both Democrats and Republicans are very interested in increasing access to higher education, lowering college costs is one way to increase access without increasing government spending , and one good way to get costs down is to get the universities and colleges to somehow foot more of the bill themselves.  The most obvious way to get higher education to pay more of the bill is to look to their endowments for greater payout.

Continuing to keep the pressure on this theme, yesterday Sen Max Baucus (D), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen Charles Grassley (R), senior Republican on the Committee, sent out a letter to 136 of the best endowed colleges and universities asking for considerable data on costs, financial aid, endowment management, growth and payout.   Just in case anyone missed the focus of this request, the press release about the letter quotes Grassley as saying  Tuition has gone up, college presidents’ salaries have gone up, and endowments continue to go up and up. We need to start seeing tuition relief for families go up just as fast. It’s fair to ask whether a college kid should have to wash dishes in the dining hall to pay his tuition when his college has a billion dollars in the bank.

It seems likely that this request will produce considerable data that has not been publicly available previously. And that probably will be a very good thing. However, since each of these institutions differs from the others in sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle ways, viewing the responses in a one-size-fits-all way could lead to some very shortsighted policies.   In any case, it looks as if Higher Education will be following with great interest the activities of the Senate Finance Committee this year.

Secure Borders and Open Doors

There is an interesting new government report just out entitled Secure Borders and Open Doors .  The Advisory Committee that prepared the report was charged by the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to try to balance the competing demands of securing our borders against threats, and of maintaining the open doors to international visitors that have served us so well in the past. The co-chairs of the Advisory Committee are John S. Chen, Chairman, CEO , and President, Sybase Inc., and Dr. Jared L. Cohon, President, Carnegie Mellon University. 

The report notes that the number of international visitors has dropped off significantly since 9/11, and that our share of transnational students has dropped as well. They make a number of very good recommendations to try to remedy this situation.  In one instance, however, they go beyond  what might be construed as the limits of their charge to make the following excellent observation:

America is losing competitiveness for international
students for one primary reason, and it is not related
to how the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA ) at State is
performing their operational responsibilities. Rather,
it is because our competitors have – and America
lacks – a proactive national strategy that enables us
to mobilize all the tools and assets at our disposal,
and that enables the federal bureaucracy to work
together in a coherent fashion, to attract international
students. Instead, the U.S. effort is characterized by
a bureaucracy that often works at cross purposes

I am not sure that I would be so confident that our loss of international students has nothing to do with the way we hand out visas, but the thrust of this observation is right on target.   I have commented earlier in these posts (see.e.g. Why has globalization had such a small effect on higher education-and when will that change?) that the US is essentially the only advanced country without an extensive strategy for attracting international students.  There is no doubt in my mind that this lack of national strategy is a significant contributor to our declining ability to attract international students.   I hope this  recommendation will stimulate some thought in the halls of power.  It must be noted, however, that earlier, similar recommendations have had no visible impact (see e.g.Are we losing the competition for international students?)

Interesting activity at the for-profit/non-profit interface: Laureate

In my most recent post, I looked at some interesting relationships between Kaplan and several traditional non-profit institutions of higher education.  In this post, I want to look at some of the relationships that Laureate is developing as it continues to evolve its globalization strategy.

Laureate Education, like Kaplan, has a branch accredited by the North Central Association - Walden University.  Walden (which incorporated the old National Technological University) is an exclusively on-line provider and so can be accessed around the world.  Walden is just one component of Laureate’s online stable which also includes Laureate online education, BV, OnlineLearning.net, and Canter.  However, the main thrust of Laureate’s strategy is bricks and mortar in the global arena.  It  has created its global network of institutions of higher education primarily by buying existing accredited private colleges and universities.  This network currently has nearly 250,000 students world-wide.  Laureate has begun to seek US accreditation for several of its offshore schools, and, for example, its Glion Institute of Higher Education and Les Roches Swiss Hotel Association of Hotel Management have both been accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Recently, Laureate has begun to expand into regions that either do not permit for-profit higher education, or that require local ownership.  This has led the company to create other types of arrangements than they have used in the past. One example is the November 2006 arrangement with Istanbul Bilgi University, a prominent non-profit Turkish university.  Turkey does not allow for-profit higher education, so a typical purchase agreement was not possible. In this case, Laureate, in partnership with parties in Turkey,  has provided 50% of the funding for a company that will provide technology, financial management, student and human resource services to Bilgi.  As part of this arrangement, Bilgi joins the Laureate University Network, which opens up opportunities for Bilgi students for study abroad and exchange programs at campuses of other members of the Network.  Additional goals of this partnership are reported to be expansion of Bilgi in Turkey, and creation of new campuses in other countries of the Middle East and Russia.  Thus, Laureate and Bilgi have found a cooperative arrangement that plays to the strengths or special advantages of each.  As a consequence, Laureate will gain a platform for entry into the Middle East, and  Bilgi will benefit from Laureate’s expertise in management and gain access to capital markets that will enable it to expand aggressively. One has to imagine that Laureate's experience in entering new markets will play a major role in Bilgi's expansion plans.  Could well be a win-win situation.

Interesting activity at the for-profit/non-profit interface: Kaplan

Conventional wisdom might suggest that for-profit and non-profit higher education institutions have nothing in common, and should stay clear of each other.  However,  there are some quite interesting areas where the two are beginning to work together, leveraging on each other’s strengths.  In fact, the arrangements look suspiciously like outsourcing of modules in the education chain.  Although there are many for-profits collaborating with the non-profits, I will focus on two of the largest for-profit higher education corporations, Kaplan and Laureate.   This post will look at Kaplan, and a subsequent post will consider a very different set of partnerships beginning to be developed by Laureate. 

For-profit Kaplan has its own North-Central-accredited undergraduate and graduate programs in both campus and online modes.  However, in addition, it runs numerous programs in partnership with traditional non-profit institutions of higher education.   One group of these programs is designed for international students whose preparation would not normally gain them admission into the partner institutions, or who feel that they need a transition period of cultural acclimation before entering the partner institutions.  Partnerships of this type are primarily with United Kingdom institutions: Nottingham Trent International College, Sheffield International College, Liverpool International College and Glasgow International College.  Each of these programs is housed on the campus of the partner institution. In each case, Kaplan provides international students with a one-year (two-year in some cases) course that focuses on building key academic skills and appropriate background work, as well as intensive English language instruction as needed.   Upon graduation from this partnership program, the student is guaranteed entry into the regular undergraduate or graduate programs of the partner institution.  For those going into regular undergraduate programs, entry is at either the first- or second-year level, depending on the specifics of the program.