Twinning and Branch Campuses: The Professorial Obstacle

Abstract

Branch campuses, twinning arrangements, and other manifestations of cross-border higher education are booming. Universities in Europe, Australasia, and North America see a huge market by offering their degrees in other countries. At the same time, Singapore and several of the states in the Arabian Gulf have identified themselves as educational centers and are attracting international higher education providers. In the Gulf, there is even competition for attracting overseas universities. China has opened its doors to foreign institutions, and India is moving in this direction. While there are no accurate numbers, more than 500 branch campuses exist worldwide—plus thousands of “twinned” programs. In addition, the phenomenon of the “American University of . . .” manifests another trend in crossborder higher education. There are a dozen or more such universities, some of which have a direct link with a US university while many simply use the name “American” and offer a US-style curriculum in English in a non-US setting. If the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) becomes part of the structure of international academic arrangements, the numbers of all kinds of cross-border institutions will increase even faster. One significant problem exists with these arrangements. Who is teaching the students at these branch campuses? What does a degree from a university signify if the teaching staff are not from the university offering the degree? To use the McDonald's analogy—is the meal (degree) a true McDonald's hamburger if only the recipe (the curriculum) comes from McDonalds. The rest of the process—the ingredients (facilities) and the cooks (professors)—are local, rather than from the sponsoring institution. Should a university in the United Kingdom (or another country) claim to offer a degree overseas if only the curriculum is from the sponsoring school, perhaps along with an element of quality control? With little data indicating the proportion of faculty members from the home universities teaching at branch or twinning campuses, anecdotal evidence shows that the numbers are small and most of the teaching is carried out by professors who are not faculty from the sponsoring institution. Even when they do come from the home university, faculty teaching at branch or twinned campuses are generally not the “star” research-active professors. It is not known if some of the recent high-prestige universities that have entered the branch campus business—the University of Chicago, the Cornell University Medical School, the University of Nottingham, and others—have a different profile than the many more average institutions thus far engaged.