The university of everywhere

The University of Birmingham’s announcement in February of the signing of an agreement to build a 50,000m2 campus in Dubai, projected to open in 2021 and eventually house 4,500 students, was the latest example of a growing trend in British higher education.

Since the University of Nottingham opened a campus in Malaysia in 2000, offshore operations have burgeoned. Nottingham pioneered on another front when it opened a joint-venture campus, the first Chinese-foreign university, in 2004. It was joined in Malaysia by the universities of Reading, Newcastle and Southampton.

Birmingham rubs shoulders in Dubai with, among others, Exeter, Bradford and Heriot-Watt. Its proposed new campus marks ‘Phase 2’ of its Dubai campus operation, which kicked off with its first cohort of 300 students in September 2018. The 2019 cohort will see a doubling of numbers, the university successfully recruiting from the region’s diverse, expatriate-heavy population.

From Mauritius to Bangladesh, Singapore to the Gulf, British outposts can be found: Britain’s 136 universities now boast 40 overseas campuses, educating some 26,000 students. Universities stress the lofty academic purposes of overseas operations – research collaboration and global knowledge-sharing. Host countries like having well-regarded British universities – four UK institutions sit in the top 10 world rankings – to help them boost their own education systems.

Professor Robin Mason, Birmingham’s international pro-vice-chancellor, says that being based internationally “is part of what it means to be an international university”. It is also about money. Transnational education (TNE) increasingly offers revenue opportunities at a time of multiple challenges for universities, including visa barriers for lucrative international students. And, of course, Brexit has added a whiff of insularity, threatening collaborations with Europe and discouraging international students further.

“Universities, at differing paces, are having to become more entrepreneurial and take opportunities,” says Mason. TNE initiatives can mitigate some risk – by providing alternative pathways to international students, for example.

The world’s education capital

The Department for Education and Department for International Trade see international higher education’s potential benefit to Brand UK in a post-Brexit world. In a joint March policy paper, they put education strategy on a par with post-Brexit export strategy. Education-related exports generated £20bn in 2016, including £1.8bn from TNE activities – up a massive 73 per cent since 2010.

With Britain facing stiff TNE competition from Australia, Canada and more, the strategy sets a target of growing earnings from international education by 75 per cent to £35bn a year by 2030 via the appointment of an ‘International Education Champion’ for British TNE and reforming the visa and post-study leave regime for international students.

Professor Catherine Montgomery, director of the University of Bath’s new Centre for Research in Education in China and East Asia, says the policy is “more about economics and trade than research, innovation and knowledge-building strategy”, although she also detects a note of “panic” in the face of Brexit.

Whatever the motivations, TNE expansion is happening, and set to expand. Universities are setting out their strategies, and it is not just about offshore campuses. British universities provide degrees and curricula to foreign institutions, and partnerships abound too. Birmingham has run a joint institute with Jinan University in China since 2017, and in March Imperial College London announced a new energy research centre in partnership with China’s Tsinghua University.

Overseas project challenges

From a project management viewpoint, overseas campuses come with no shortage of challenges and risk – delayed break-even points, the programme and market, local regulatory structure, staff and student recruitment, and leadership. So does a ‘home champion’ exist to minimise the chances of an ‘orphan’ branch campus?

Approaches can vary, as two different campuses in Dubai show. The University of Birmingham Dubai offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and, Mason says, is “a proper campus rather than a satellite operation” of the Edgbaston red-brick home.

By contrast, City, University of London has operated in Dubai since 2007 from rented premises in the Dubai International Financial Centre. City started off small, with its Cass Business School operating its Executive MBA, also offered in London, while gradually adding postgraduate programmes – a strategy of “cautious growth in a targeted and careful way”, says Kevin Dunseath, City’s regional director in Dubai.

City aims entirely to attract experienced, professional, part-time postgraduates, with a “fly-in, fly-out” faculty from London. Dunseath explains: “As soon as you have undergraduate programmes, the game changes dramatically. You need support staff, facilities, transport, more staff – the model becomes very different.”

At first glance, Birmingham’s approach is far riskier. But home champion Mason stresses that the University of Birmingham’s council has been on board with Dubai from the start. Other locations were considered, including Malaysia, but rejected as they were already saturated. With Birmingham the first global top 100 Russell Group university to operate in Dubai, the emirate felt like a good fit.

The vision, Mason underlines, is Birmingham’s own – campuses reliant on host subsidy or support are a bad idea, he says. Still, alignment with local needs and strong local relationships are “absolutely crucial” – especially with the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, Dubai’s private education regulatory authority, which signs off on programmes. “The approval process can be lengthy, but that puts a brake on rash ideas.”

Problems along the way, says Mason, were “fewer and smaller than anticipated”. There was a bump when a local partner went by the wayside early: “It soon became apparent that our objectives were not quite the same.” Another came in 2018 with the jailing of Matthew Hedges, a Durham University PhD student, in the United Arab Emirates on spying charges (he was later released), when unions representing Birmingham staff called for a boycott of the Dubai campus in response.

Project managing an overseas campus

Ben Bailey, the University of Birmingham Dubai’s director of operations, agrees with Mason on the smooth project management for Birmingham in Dubai so far, suggesting only that more time in-country in advance would have been advantageous.

For project managers moving overseas to lead a team, getting used to a new environment alongside running a project can often be a deep dive into the unknown. Bailey says he finds doing business in Dubai fascinating.

“It is a diverse place, with over 200 nationalities,” he explains. The need to acclimatise to the local culture, while hitting the ground running with work, demands an ability to adapt quickly.

“There is a need to develop multi-faceted cultural competence to work effectively with a range of partners, while addressing the different legislative and practice norms,” Bailey reflects.

For him, the Phase 2 campus provides the next challenge to the university’s established project management approach. It is being built by TECOM Group, a Dubai-based property developer and manager, at its Dubai International Academic City (DIAC) – a purpose-built hub campus that houses some 30 universities from a host of countries.

Under the arrangement, TECOM will build the new Hopkins Architects-designed campus, and Birmingham will be entirely responsible for the operation thereafter. It will be a 30-year-investment for TECOM, and a long road.

Still, Bailey is confident, anticipating the advantages for students of “a proper campus with fountain, green space and food court”, and the service provision efficiencies and collaborative benefits through sharing of facilities. Transnational hubs like DIAC are rapidly becoming a TNE feature: others, including Qatar’s Education City and Malaysia’s EduCity, are the go-to destinations for universities with global ambitions. “TNE hubs are a good market entry point,” says Bailey. “On our own it would have been much more difficult.”

Like Phase 1, Birmingham’s Dubai Phase 2 project is large and complex, so there are multiple work streams to the project (build, education, legal, etc), with contributors from across the university in both Birmingham and Dubai. “The project board oversees the effective governance of the project, and responsible leads connect with colleagues in Dubai regularly without the need for extensive travel,” explains Bailey.

The future isn’t campuses: discuss

Dunseath, Mason and Bailey all vouch for the idea of the international campus. In Bailey’s eyes, it demonstrates a sense of long-term commitment to host countries. But campuses are far from the full story for TNE, and Bath’s Montgomery also has reservations: “There are questions over the long-term viability of offshore branch campuses.”

Some UK universities are going in the opposite direction. Wolverhampton and Aberystwyth universities are among those to have closed campuses (in Mauritius). And, in 2020, University College London (UCL), which bills itself as London’s ‘global university’, will close the campus it has operated in Qatar since 2010, when its contract with the Qatar Foundation ends, reportedly to focus on programme delivery from its London Bloomsbury campus and, in future, its planned UCL East campus alongside London’s Olympic Park.

Birmingham’s TNE approach is far from reliant on a Dubai campus, which is not just about Dubai: Bailey stresses it is also about developing connections with China via recruitment of Chinese students into Dubai. Mason points to partnerships with China and Brazil, and also outlines improvements Birmingham is making to the running of its outreach offices in its key target markets of China, Brazil, North America and India. “With the exception of China, we have not been ambitious and strategic enough.”

And in light of Brexit, Birmingham is also turning its focus to a region perhaps taken for granted by UK universities: Europe. “About the only Brexit positive has been that it has given everyone a jolt, leading us to think much more seriously about European engagement, ”says Mason. A strategic partnership between Birmingham and Trinity College Dublin is under way, with more in Europe besides.

Britain’s universities, and the Department for International Trade, may have high hopes for TNE, but nothing can be taken for granted. Already, Malaysia bans links with universities not highly rated; China is getting ever-more choosy with joint ventures. Montgomery points out that China and East Asia have invested heavily in education and have become far tougher customers: in 2018, she says, China closed 25 per cent of transnational programmes, including 200 UK ones.

Yet, Montgomery says: “UK policy still retains a sense of exporting education products rather than collaborating on their development. There must be a will to understand the other side and engage with a more collaborative approach to international education, which the UK has not previously been used to.” Mason highlights Britain’s strength, even with Brexit looming: “British universities are very plural and diverse in their views and programmes when compared to just about anywhere in the world.” 

Conrad Heine is a London-based freelance journalist.