Internationalization

NUMBER 53, FALL 2008

The Private Nature of Cross-Border Higher Education

Jason E. Lane and Kevin Kinser
Jason Lane is assistant professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies, University at Albany, SUNY. Kevin Kinser is a PROPHE collaborating scholar and associate professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies, University at Albany, SUNY. E-mail: jlane@albany.edu; kkinser@albany.edu.

IHE devotes a column in each issue to a contribution from PROPHE, the Program for Research on Private Higher Education, headquartered at the University at Albany. See http://www.albany.edu/.

Many observers have noted that the relatively easy international mobility of students, faculty, and curriculum facilitates the growth of cross-border higher education. Equally important, new foreign providers are encouraged in many countries by a policy environment that supports private-sector involvement in education. Private higher education institutions, especially for-profit providers, are clearly interested in the cross-border market. Still, public-sector institutions have been and continue to be significant participants in cross-border higher education. When abroad, however, these public institutions nearly always operate and are legally recognized as private entities. Indeed, most foreign operations are supported primarily through tuition and fees and typically do not receive funding from either the home or the host governments.

Nonendemic Academic Institutions
In ecology, an endemic organism is the native inhabitant of a unique and often geographically constrained environment. In a similar way, public institutions are endemic to a particular policy environment defined by state borders. However, cross-border public higher education, by establishing locations outside of its native political and financial home, exists apart from its home environment. This introduces something new into the host country and establishes nonendemic academic institutions in cross-border higher education.

We first used endemism as a way to describe domestic cross-border activity within the United States. In a little noticed phenomenon, many public, state-supported institutions such as Central Michigan University and Troy University (Alabama) have established campuses outside their home state. These educational organizations are regulated as private-sector entities in the new state, while experiencing almost no oversight from the home state. This regulatory disparity means that it is often easier for a public institution to pursue new markets in the private-sector environments of other states than within their native state environment.

Similar activity seems to be occurring with cross-border higher education internationally. Rather than expanding in their own environments, institutions from developed nations are moving into the less-regulated and less-competitive environments of developing nations. As Daniel C. Levy has long noted, the private sector of most countries have limited regulations, and governments often do not anticipate growth of the private sector. This trend makes it difficult to predict how the entry of a new nonendemic institutional type will affect existing educational structures, policies, and capacities.

Indeed, countries actively encourage foreign institutions to offer higher education within their borders without making a policy distinction between public or private institutions. The Dubai International Academic City, for example, recruits public institutions from other countries to open programs in Dubai, and those programs are being authorized to operate as autonomous private entities. The impact of these foreign institutions on existing regulatory frameworks in the emirate is uncertain, but they may herald the unanticipated consequences of emerging new institutional forms in other countries.

Regulation in the Cross-Border Environment
In cross-border education, foreign organizations may also disturb the existing policy environment and throw out of balance the regulatory mechanisms in the host country. As in the Dubai case, cross-border policies may regulate foreign state-sponsored entities as if they were fully private, nongovernmental organizations. In fact, foreign academic institutions remain at a competitive advantage to their true private-sector colleagues because of their public-sector connections at home. Even with firewalls to prevent state funds or other resources to directly support cross-border activities, such as with many Australian universities, the campus can benefit from brand recognition of the home campus and the existing administrative support structure of the home campus. Further, their association with a recognized government provides a level of credibility and perceived quality assurance (whether true or not) of which privates may not benefit.

Cross-border regulations may assume that foreign academic institutions, as public-sector entities, have home government endorsement of their cross-border activities. In reality, though, such organizations can complete international collaborations and commitments with little government oversight, especially in the vast majority of cases where no government resources are at risk. We found this occurring in our study of US domestic cross-border activity, and anecdotal evidence suggests this can be true in international efforts as well. These cross-border campuses can fall through the cracks of quality-assurance regulations, with both governments assuming the other (or some entity within the country) is providing oversight, but neither actively engaging in such a way.

Agreements between the host country and the foreign organization may not consider the ability of the home government to assert its authority over any cross-border activity, whether or not state funds are directly involved. The host country is allowing an agency of a different government to operate within its borders, while treating it as a private-sector nongovernmental organization. Participation in a foreign country may have domestic political concerns that contradict the ostensibly private nature of the cross-border activity. For example, the home government may question the propriety of state higher education involvement in the capacity building of a foreign country. The home government could go so far as to restrict or force redesign of the type of curriculum delivered, out of fear for national security or aiding a global competitor.

New Questions
Thinking of cross-border higher education as a private enterprise in the traditional sense oversimplifies the true nature of the organizations. Even though they operate in the private sector and are regulated as private entities, as extensions of a public government, many cross-border endeavors raise new questions about the role and operation of these institutions. Are such institutions truly independent institutions? To what extent does a home government's political agenda affect operations of the cross-border activity? As research continues in this arena, such questions need to be further investigated in order to provide a more robust understanding of this phenomenon.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number53/p11_Lane_Kinzer.htm