British universities overseas: it's about more than just a piece of paper

Nottingham University staff in Malaysia say why branch campuses beat franchising arrangements every time
  • Guardian Professional,
  • Jump to comments ()
Nottingham in Malaysia
Students relax in front of the faculty of social sciences at Nottingham University's Malaysian campus. Photograph: Nottingham University

Working with Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) figures, the Guardian Higher Education Network has calculated that 18% of students who are working towards first degrees with a UK university are doing so wholly overseas.

In 2009-10, 310,525 undergraduates were studying abroad for a qualification certified by a UK university, compared with 1,421,490 studying in the UK.

Some of these overseas students are studying at one of the 13 branch campuses of UK institutions, but the majority are studying at local institutions through franchise arrangements. For every branch campus there are many more local colleges that have entered into twinning or franchising arrangements with UK institutions. In these arrangements the UK institution supplies a curriculum, learning materials and quality assurance while the local partner provides the regional infrastructure and employs local staff to teach the UK material.

Stephen Doughty, vice-provost at Nottingham's 41 hectare (100 acre) Malaysian campus, is sceptical about twinning arrangements, questioning the worth of the education they provide. While they may have the Nottingham course material, they don't have the same ethos towards teaching and so don't deliver it in the same way. "The Malaysian education system is not quite rote learning but is very rigid, based on books; there is no questioning," he says.

"The person standing up at the front is right and you listen to them, and we work hard to knock that out of students and say look, question me, question what I'm saying. Trying to get them to do that is a challenge. If students haven't got that real UK experience then all they've got is a bit of paper"

Doughty makes the point that these arrangements often turn out to be temporary and as such they don't help in the development of a resilient local infrastructure. He says that franchises make it "very easy for the UK institution to extract themselves … If something happens in that country they can just pull the plug and be out of there very, very quickly with no resource implication. You've seen our campus, we're not in and out of here, we're here to stay."

CEO and provost Ian Pashby admits that there was some initial trepidation: "I suspect that there was a lot of uncertainty in the early days, it was very adventurous, and I know that in the early stages it was tough. Nobody else had done this here, so the system here didn't really know how to deal with us, we didn't know how to deal with them."

But Nottingham's senior management is now very pleased with where they are at. In the past five years the Malaysian branch campus has grown from 950 to 4,000 students. The current plan is to increase numbers by between 300 and 400 each year. "We've got a plan for about 5,000 students by 2015," Pashby says.

Nottingham aims to do this largely by introducing new subjects. The main disciplines on the Malaysian campus "have a very strong, direct link to a career," Pashby says, and almost half of students are studying engineering, pharmacy or business. "That's what people want to see and they're big schools," say Pashby. "We could increase our numbers just by increasing the number of engineers, but we don't want to do that, we want to become more comprehensive."

"There is probably a limit to the range of subjects that will be successful out here, but we are learning all the time. We don't expect schools such as international relations to be on the same scale as chemical engineering but you never know."

Nottingham's decision to open a branch campus in Malaysia was prompted by Najib Razak, the prime minister, who wants to turn Malaysia into the educational hub of the region. 40% of Nottingham's students in Malaysia are from outside the country.

Pashby says the fastest growing market is central Asia, places like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The market for students from India has always been strong with large numbers of students also applying from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. He also sees potential in the Middle East, and applications from China and Vietnam remain strong.

Nottingham's Malaysian campus has the benefit that it can apply for funding from more than one region. Doughty says: "EU funding is quite interesting because we are viewed as both a UK and an Asian institution so we can pitch to whichever suits us best."

UK branch campuses rely almost entirely on tuition fees and Nottingham's Malaysian campus is 98% funded by fees. "Students come with their money and they pay us. We don't get money from the government. We don't get money from the UK. Hefce [the Higher Education Funding Council for England] money certainly can't come here. So it's all about fee paying students," Doughty says. "Five years ago that was very different to the UK, but now, actually, it's going to be very similar."


More on management and administration

About Guardian Professional

  • Guardian Professional Networks


Today in pictures