Foreign-Backed Universities: A New Trend

Abstract

subprime institutions-sleazy recruiters, degree packagers, low-end private institutions seeking to stave off bankruptcy through the export market and even a few respectable universities forced by government funding cutbacks to enter foreign markets for profit making. Buyers, such as students but also including some academic institutions in developing countries, are similarly unregulated, sometimes ill-informed and often naive. Most tragically, students and their families buy international educational services without much information or understanding. Sometimes recruited to study abroad at subprime schools or motivated more by the desire to seek employment than to study, students may be shortchanged. Uninformed or simply avaricious institutions in developing countries may partner with low-quality colleges and universities in, for example, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and receive substandard teaching or degree courses. Regulatory agencies may be entirely missing or inappropriate, thus making quality assurance impossible to achieve. There are not enough top-quality universities in countries like China and India to absorb all of the potential overseas partners. Further, most academic institutions worldwide lack the infrastructures to successfully engage in sophisticated international programs and initiatives. How to Avoid a Crisis Transparency is a key step for building a healthy international higher education environment. This approach means obtaining accurate information about the scope and extent of international higher education-by governments, international and regional organizations, and by universities. Information about motives and policies would also be useful, although now very little reliable information is available. The market should not be left to determine the success or failure of international higher education. Some interests, especially the governments of the major "sellers" (such as the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom and the for-profit education industry) argue that the doors to international commerce in higher education should be open and that this openness should be legislated by the World Trade Organization through the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Such forced openness would leave the world subject to whatever irrational exuberance and bubble mentality that is now evident in the mortgage industry and is increasingly in higher education. The world also needs clear regulation, probably by government authority, to ensure that national interests are served and students and their families are not subjected to shoddy business practices by unscrupulous education providers. This will also help academic institutions themselves think about their motivations for entry into the global education market. Internationalization, including student mobility, cross-border educational provision, and involvement in the global knowledge economy of the 21st century is a positive and inevitable element of global higher education. What academe needs to avoid is succumbing to subprime practices and the inevitable crisis that will ensue.