Setting the scene: what’s the vision?

First, all three strategies run to 2035. This is in line with a growing tendency in the UK to move from shorter-term (3-5 year) strategic plans to longer-term (10 or more year) ones.

It’s interesting (to strategy nerds like me) to compare the global dimension within their visions. (Bold text in the quotations below is mine.)

Manchester

Manchester has ‘Our North Star’, rather than a traditional vision. This certainly highlights a global role for the university, linking it to knowledge creation for the public good – in a changing and challenging geopolitical context.

• Becoming a great 21st century university.

The world is changing, fast. Climate, tech, geopolitics – everything is shifting. But this isn't the first time Manchester has risen to the moment. We were born as an answer. The first modern civic university, built for an industrial age. Now, it's our turn to define what a great university looks like for the 21st century, creating knowledge for the public good, locally and globally.

Sussex

Sussex has an ambitious vision to create progressive futures for the whole world, though it then narrows down the areas where it seeks to contribute. These three areas are described within the strategy as ‘transformational themes’.

• Our vision is to harness our collective effort to create progressive futures for the whole world and for our own University. We want to make distinctive, inventive, and positive contributions to environmental sustainability, human flourishing, and digital and data futures, ensuring that Sussex thrives as a research-intensive, educationally excellent and student-centred institution that champions diversity, creativity, and excellence.

Bournemouth

Bournemouth’s vision majors on ‘solutions’ – to real-world challenges that matter to both local and global communities.

• We will be a vibrant educational community, creating solutions to real-world challenges and shaping the future of our society and economy. Together, our graduates and partners will turn ideas into impact, with a shared commitment to accelerate solutions that matter to the communities we serve locally and globally.

Is there any explicit mention of TNE?

TL;DR: Not a lot.

Bournemouth

The fourth pillar of Bournemouth’s strategy is ‘Place and partnerships’. The ambition set out under this pillar is to ‘use our location and partnerships to strengthen communities, support regional and global prosperity, and create opportunities for our students’. 

One of the four commitments to support this is to ‘grow our regional, national and international networks to widen opportunity and exchange’. One of the foundations underpinning this has an explicit global partnership dimension:

• Grow carefully chosen education partnerships, including with further education and international partners, to widen access, support local progression and extend our global reach.

It mentions as a strength ‘our growing portfolio of Transnational Education collaborations, including the launch of our first Joint Institute in China with Tianjin University of Technology’, which are positioned as ‘expanding educational opportunity’ by increasing access to ‘BU’s educational pathways and support[ing] a globally connected learning community’.

The final pillar is ‘Financial sustainability’. There isn’t any specific mention of TNE or international partnerships here, though proposed actions include:

• Redefine our approach to student recruitment, diversify markets and grow market share.
• Create a commercial strategy to enable diversified income and reduce reliance on tuition fees.

Sussex

Intersecting with its three transformational themes (environmental sustainability, human flourishing, and digital and data futures), Sussex focuses on three core activities ‘to create progressive futures for Sussex and for the whole world’.

The third of these is ‘Global and civic engagement’, which includes the commitment to ‘strengthen our global reputation as a destination for ambitious forward-thinking international students and as a higher education partner, building equitable partnerships in education and research.’

An enabling action relating to financial sustainability is quite general, with a focus on delivering ‘a reliable operating margin for strategic investment and income growth from education, research, and innovation’.

Manchester

Manchester’s strategy is innovative and distinctive (as recognised in Canada's Higher Education Strategy Associates blog), with global partnership woven through its five Leaps (described as ‘the bold, strategic choices that set a new trajectory for the kind of university the future demands’):

• Flexible, personalised and digitally enabled learning
• Accelerating the path from research excellence to impact
• A powerhouse of innovation
• The university to partner with
• Digital inside and out.

While there’s no explicit mention of TNE, the focus on flexible learning and the expansion of Manchester Online provide a platform for increased numbers of global distance learning students.  

There is also rich content in a sub-section called ‘International Centres and Partnerships’.

• Our international partnerships will be guided by a clearer framework – aligned to our strategy, academic strengths, long-term ambitions and values of social responsibility, equity and inclusive collaboration. We will focus on deeper relationships with institutions who share our purpose and on structuring our collaborations for mutual value.
• Our international centres in Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore already provide a Manchester education globally. They will now take on a more active role in acting as springboards for research, engagement, philanthropy and industry collaboration.
• Our international centres extend Manchester’s civic reach and enable us to take what works in Manchester to the world but also learn from what works globally to bring back to Manchester. Our collaborations will be more flexible and responsive – from grassroots organisations to policy institutes, social enterprises and communities – creating insight, innovation and impact in diverse contexts.

Manchester’s strategy doesn’t include the usual enabling objectives (e.g. financial sustainability), but instead sets out clear principles and shared ways of working.

Is the IES just ‘saying the quiet bit out loud’?

The three institutional strategies sampled (all launched this academic year) steer away from using the terms transnational education and TNE. The full tally of usage is:

• Manchester: 0
• Sussex: 0
• Bournemouth: 1 (as a kind of case study)

This coyness about the term TNE may be deliberate, particularly at the level of institutional strategy. In my consultancy work, I’ve found that ‘internationalisation jargon’ can be perceived by key stakeholders as alienating. Whether that’s the case or not, the end result is that any TNE ambitions tend to be wrapped up in noble words about reciprocal partnerships, expanding access, social responsibility and mutual value.

The approach in the UK’s IES is less subtle. While there are a couple of references to ‘mutual understanding’ and ‘expanding access’, the headline target of £40 billion per annum in export income (reflecting ‘significant growth opportunities in areas beyond international student recruitment’) suggests that a lot is resting on TNE as an income stream.

If that significant income generation potential is real, you might expect forward-looking UK universities to be explicitly referencing TNE in their institutional strategies as a key means of income diversification.

If they are, I’ve missed it.

One take on this is that, in contrast to the institutional strategies, the IES is ‘saying the quiet bit out loud’ (i.e. being more honest about the income generation driver).

Another take is that the institutional strategies are both more idealistic and more realistic. They recognise that, while global partnerships bring wide-ranging benefits, investing in TNE is a long-term project and rarely a money-spinner.    

Either way, the lack of connection in institutional strategies between TNE and financial sustainability seems at odds with the expectations of the government strategy.

Tags/Keywords

UK INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION STRATEGY TRANSNATIONAL EDUCATION FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

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