Relationship Building between Host Countries and Regional Education Hubs
Topic:
By 2015, The effects of globalization dynamics facing nations worldwide are well-established; The increased flow of human resources across borders, the proliferation of information technology and the emergence of economic liberalization and trade agreements (Knight 374) have spurred the demand for knowledge-based economies with international-minded professionals throughout both OECD countries and emerging markets (Ennew & Fujia 21). As such, the demand for quality, nation-transcending higher education has outstripped supply across much of Asia, Africa and the Middle East and revenue-strapped Western universities have decided that exporting services to the East is a legitimate, if not bold, method of raising funds and advancing brand notoriety. This trend in educational entrepreneurism has exploded in recent years, with “at least 183 international branch campuses worldwide” and new institutions emerging yearly (Wilkins & Huisman 1). Despite near-constant growth in the international branch campus model, “overseas expansion is a high-risk growth strategy and unsuccessful ventures can result in huge financial losses and reputational consequences” (Wilkins & Huisman 2); the failure of all but two of Japan’s many branch campuses is cautionary tale of how unpredictable economic currents can lead to certain ruin (Reilly 534). While the road to a successful venture is littered with failed schools due to economic concerns, to emphasize the economic trends as the major challenge facing international branch schools undersells the other various structural and political threats on both the institution and state levels. Despite this, there are several examples where branch campuses have leveraged their preeminent faculty and staff while relying on local expertise to develop a mutually beneficial paradigm. By evaluating educational hubs in Qatar and Malaysia using the World Institutionalism Framework, it will become clear that despite various degrees of cultural convergence and divergence, the key to successful branch school experiences is rooted global-local and public-private collaboration rather than replica models that lack local oversight or partner schools that are suffocated by regulations.
Research Question:
What are the regulative, normative, political and cultural factors associated with the implementation of an international education hub in Qatar & Malaysia?
Theoretical Framework:
With education internationalizing, Institutional Theory has become helpful in understanding how “the adoption of structures, practices and beliefs [help branch schools] conform to normative expectations for legitimacy” (Wilkins & Huisman 3). Simply stated: “Institutions constrain and regulate behavior” (Wilkins & Huisman 3). Thus, if the host countries’ rationale for establishing branch campuses and education hubs is deeply rooted in establishing preeminent scholarship for a knowledge-based work-force in predominantly private labor – engineering, medicine, law and finance – while concurrently bolstering the flagging national tertiary schooling system (Miller-Idriss & Hanauer 194), then the host country is making a sacrifice to national autonomy, and in a sense inviting post-colonial imperialism – nearly 40% of branch campuses worldwide hail from the USA, with an additional 25% from Canada, Australia and the UK (Miller-Idriss & Hanauer 186-187). On a regulative-level, nations and schools jockey for legitimacy through implementing their own predetermined principles. As international institutions establish curricula, hire local and international faculty and staff, and develop social and recreational activities, these offerings fulfill (Eurocentric) institutional and industry benchmarks while influencing local and national universities’ behavior. This is not to say that host countries do not have their own mechanisms to influence and manipulate behavior; host countries have the right to establish the rules and have the final say in legitimizing branch schools’ credentials. Case in point: “[In India] foreign universities do not in fact require any approvals before establishing operations in the country. However, the degrees awarded solely by foreign providers are not legally recognized” (Wilkins & Huisman 4). Despite regulative tensions, host countries and branch schools are not embroiled in a zero sum game; the branch campus is a guest in the host country and its success will be welcomed as a rising socioeconomic tide.
Regulative mechanisms not only summon local-global tensions, but also respond and influence normative functions. Normative processes “are based upon norms and values that exist in society. Values are conceptions of the preferred or the desirable together with the construction of standards to which existing structures or behaviors can be compared and assessed” (Wilkins & Huisman 5). Branch schools, and particularly education hubs, have taken on the role of combating the notion of weak regional tertiary education systems; in the case of Qatar, “[t]here is an acknowledged problem with the poor quality of many institutions, and their ability to prepare the region’s growing youth population for the twenty-first century knowledge economy and work force has been called into question” (Miller-Idriss & Hanauer 194). While host countries perceive the branch campus as a welcome intervention changing perceptions of national higher education, in an era of unprecedented educational entrepreneurialism, educational institutions understand that branch schools can expand reach and galvanize brand. Thus, the belief that education is a public good is quickly fading and “Western countries seem to have adopted the notion that higher education is a tradable commodity to be sold for commercial gain” (Wilkins & Huisman 7). With this realist framing, cross-border education begins to solidify itself as the host country and branch school acting within their own interests to advance their own values. Despite this anarchical paradigm, regulation through mutual understanding of normative and regulative compromise is the key to joint-success.
The branch school model is inherently controversial and its presence alone implicitly censures previously existing educational structures. This paper does not assess the moral impact of branch schools, nor does it assess their overarching societal impact. This paper operates under an assumption: host countries always act within their own interests. This paper is concerned with the relationship between branch schools and host countries and how this relationship evolves based on national and institutional beliefs.
Literature Review:
While in recent years higher education institutions have adopted a nearly dogmatic belief that internationalizing curriculum, offering study abroad opportunities and enrolling students from abroad enhances the educational product at home, the practice of exporting education abroad via a branch campus is not a new idea; one well-known example dates back to 1911 when the Harvard School of Medicine in China opened (Reilly 532). Despite this, the concept of a regional education hub – “a planned effort to build a critical mass of local and international actors strategically engaged in cross-border education, training knowledge production and innovation initiatives” (Knight 379) – did not emerge until the mid-1990s when Qatar announced plans to break ground on the Qatari Education City (Knight & Morshidi 379). Since then, we have seen the emergence of at least seven education hubs. They are located in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Botswana (Knight 375). The international education hub does not spell the death knell for the branch school, but rather demonstrates their perceived success. As Knight states in The complexities and challenges of regional education hubs:
The recent emergence of regional education hubs is related to three important developments in the internationalization of higher education. The first is the growth in the scope and scale of cross-border education, the second is the new emphasis on regionalization of higher education, and the third is the key role that higher education plays in the knowledge economy (594).
It’s important to note that not all branch campuses are alike; host countries’ tertiary educational quality, regulatory policies and expectations are all normative and regulative factors which influence the pace and intensity of branch school development. Furthermore, these same factors must be considered for institutional development abroad, as “the taken-for-grantedness, based on cultural-cognitive understandings in the Western world may clash with that of the host country” (Wilkins & Huisman 8).
Between host country understandings and institutional understandings exists institutional difference – “the difference between the regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive institutional environments in an organization’s home country and a foreign host country” (Kostova & Zaheer 68). In addition to institutional difference, institutional uncertainty constitutes a crucial tool for determining how to institute branch schools. Institutional uncertainty considers the acceptance of ambiguity. For example, “[i]n developing countries, institutions are often less developed, and they can often be evolving at a rapid pace” (Wilkins & Huisman 8) resulting in higher levels of risk for the branch school. When institutional difference and institutional uncertainty are not considered, branch school initiatives cannot achieve sustainability.
Wilkins & Huisman evaluate institutional difference against institutional uncertainty to develop a framework for developing branch campuses and education hubs. As figure 1 illustrates, the ideal circumstances for establishing a branch campus is with a low intuitional uncertainty, low institutional difference foreign host country. In this circumstance, home institutions can be duplicated in the foreign host country. Furthermore, in instances where institutional uncertainty is low and institutional difference is high, adapting home country’s institutions to foreign host country’s customs is permitted. This often takes the form of a branch schools operating autonomously, but changing regulative and normative structures to fit the host country’s practices. On the other hand, in instances where institutional uncertainty is high, but institutional difference is low, branch schools can be established in collaboration with a local partner. This model permits the branch school to replicate its model without fully investing. Finally, in circumstances where both institutional uncertainty and institutional difference is high, branch schools should be avoided.
Adapted from Wilkins & Huisman 9
Figure 1 Transnational strategies for a university based on institutional difference and institutional uncertainty.
Clearly institutional difference and institutional uncertainty play a major role in determining how branch schools are developed, but education hubs often have deeper purpose than the singular branch schools. Jane Knight and Sirat Morshidi identify the three categories of hubs in The complexities and challenges of regional education hubs as student hubs, skilled workforce training hubs and knowledge and innovation hubs (600). These categories are thought to be sequential and build upon each other; for example, a knowledge and innovation hub cannot be established without first attracting students and developing research and development facilities. For two nations – Qatar and Malaysia – education hubs were identified as a solution to national challenges; however, regulative and normative differences have led to far different products and different understandings of success. Using these two case studies and the institutional theory framework as understood by Wilkins & Huisman’s transnational strategies, we will determine how regulative and normative tensions between host countries and branch schools determine the extent of development and how success is defined for regional education hubs.
Qatari Case-Study:
As the first nation to pursue the establishment an education hub, Qatar is in many ways a trailblazer. Rich in natural resource, “Qatar has focused on decreasing its dependence on natural resources and moving forward to become one of the major players in the knowledge economy” (Knight 377). This success was not born overnight and involved significant investment and an involved marketing campaign. Unlike its peers, Qatar can best be understood as a talent hub, where “the overarching goal is human resource development for a skilled work force (Knight 382);” and thus, Qatar’s education hub is not exclusively about bringing scholarship and students from abroad together, but “to develop highly qualified educated citizens capable of participating in the development of a nation…[and providing] the region with a skilled workforce (Knight 385). With such an emphasis on retaining labor to meet an unmet supply-side challenge, Qatar has established scholarships, recruiting initiatives and other programming aimed at Qatari citizens to not just attract, but also retain their services. This strategy of “Qatariziation,” is reinforced by the understanding that Education City’s main aim is to educate the Qatari people. With this information, while it’s difficult to label Education City a failure, it is not achieving its main aim; even if the hub is enrolled to its capacity, international students count for over 50% of the student body (Vora 2244).
As Education City’s “[American] universities are underpinned by Western liberal ideologies – namely multiculturalism, egalitarianism, secularism, democracy and liberal feminism – [they] do not always match up with the Qatari understandings of national futures and traditional values” (Vora 2244) and many have called branch campus establishment a new form of colonialism (Wilkins & Huisman 7). To this end, “the project has heightened local concerns about too much Western influence, which might result in the loss of Arabic language, Muslim values and traditional Qatari social relations” (Vora 2244). While branch schools may be failing to promote Qatari values, Qatariziation policies may be resulting in a two-tiered educational system at odds Western educational values. The Qatari Foundation, a Not-For-Profit organization that oversees Education City, has given the six American institutions the freedom to establish home country practices and beliefs. As a result, Western practices, such as “gender-integrated classrooms, English-only education, curricula that foster[s] critical thinking on topics like religion and sexuality, student government” (Vora 2244) are keystones to the educational model. However, because of Qatarization, typical Western outcomes – meritocracy and egalitarianism – do not manifest themselves at Education City. With scholarship structures and national recruiting initiatives, the Qatari minority have significantly more opportunity then the international student majority. Ultimately, this structure can be seen as an extension of the longstanding migrant sponsorship system called Kafala, which prevents foreign labor from ever receiving citizenship or permanent residency regardless of time spent in Qatar, and ensures that there is a basic understanding between the service provider and client: providers are to deliver job-applicable knowledge for the emerging Qatari workforce (Vora 2245).
Malaysian Case-Study:
The Malaysian case-study varies considerably in mission and implementation, and thus offers an interesting contrast to Qatar’s Education City. While Malaysia went public with its intent to open Iskandar Educity – Malaysia’s first regional education hub – in 2007, the Malaysian government identified the need for a more robust higher education apparatus in 1996 (Knight & Morshidi 601). Unwilling to spend the requisite funds for more public schooling, Malaysia lifted regulations on establishing private education “which [has] facilitated the establishment of various forms of collaborative arrangements between foreign and local providers, including the development of twinning, franchising and double/joint degree arrangements (Knight & Morshidi 603). As a former colony of England, Malaysia was able to integrate Western cross-border educational programming with ease, leading to over 3,000 accredited cross-border educational programs by 2008. It is with this success that Malaysia came to understand its ability as a student hub for cross-border education. With the development of branch campuses, the number of international students in Malaysia doubled from 2003-2008 to surpass 70,000 (Knight & Morshidi 604).
Malaysia’s decision to establish an education hub is driven by Malaysia’s unique history as a nation in the cross-roads between Confucian East Asia and the Muslim world; “[s]tudents come from more than 80 countries…the 10 most active sending countries [are predominantly East Asian and Islamic States], and contribute 67% (47,022 students)” (Knight & Morshidi 604). Furthermore, Malaysia’s colonial history and strong ties to Western schools presented an opportunity to become “a low cost destination to get an internationally recognized degree” (Knight & Morshidi 599). Despite tremendous success drawing international students, Malaysia is driven by more than becoming a Student Hub and evidence is a public-private investment into Iskandar Educity’s and Kuala Lumpur Education City’s (KLEC) establishment. Thus, there are:
Social and economic motives drive the new KLEC enterprise. On one hand, there is a pressing need to invest more into developing the human capital necessary for Malaysia’s knowledge economy and on the other hand, KLEC aims to showcase Malayisa as an environment-friendly, energy efficient and networked knowledge based regional centre (Knight & Morshidi 599).
Therefore, it is crucial to understand Malaysia’s grand ambitions are not just as a student hub, but also as a center for workforce training and innovation development. At this juncture, it is too early to tell how successful Malaysia’s education hubs will be at jumping from the student hub to pioneering global innovation, but with less regulative and normative distance between branch schools and the foreign host country, and a low level of institutional uncertainty, branch schools can be established with ease, eliminating a major barrier to success
Comparative Analysis:
Founded in 1998, Qatar’s Education City holds a 10 year advantage on Malaysia’s Regional Education Hub, which was founded in 2007. Education City’s longevity is instrumental in its establishment as an international student hub. However, if Education City’s ambition is establishing a regional workforce and training hub, then the Qatari Foundation may have given branch schools too much leniency in establishing Western educational practices and values. While institutions understand these values as the bedrock of Western education, institutional difference may be driving Qatari students – particularly female students – away from enrollment at Education City, leading to the university’s skewed enrollment numbers in favor of the international student body. In its current iteration, Qatar is incorporating schools into Education City under the assumption that there is low institutional difference and high institutional uncertainty. This model, which suggests establishing fully autonomous universities through a foreign home country institution, does not seem applicable to Qatar’s situation. Qatar is a famously weather nation and has self-funded almost all of Education City’s operations. Given the massive normative and regulative differences between Qatar and the West, it would seem that the host institution should adapt practices to fit the needs of Qatar and Qatarization. Thus, Western universities deserve some blame for accepting Education City’s generous invitation without adjusting any of their services to the community that is served.
Malaysia’s development from a country without branch schools to that of endorsing education hubs was slower than Qatar, and resulted in a more seamless and calculated process. Global education in Malaysia developed in sync with the rate of economic development and educational demand. Because of Malaysia’s close ties with the West and low institutional differences, developing programs that nearly replicate Western models was easy and well received by its target market. Furthermore, the education hub was only established in Malaysia after successfully establishing itself as a student hub (in the sense that there was 70,000 international students studying in a country of less than 30 million resident). With “[t]he New Economic Model for Malaysia released in early 2010 focus[ing] on Malaysia moving to a knowledge and service oriented economy to achieve high income status,” (Knight, J., & Morshidi 605) Malaysia’s model of slow progress seems to be matching the country’s overarching design.
Conclusion:
The convergence of nations and cultures in the 21st century has been a defining feature of the time and these trends will only continue for the coming years. Despite this, with the establishment of transnational institutions, national regulations, norms and cultures should not be discounted. When establishing education, the practices that give education legitimacy in the West may have significant unintended consequences elsewhere. Thus, to develop successful enterprises, understanding the regulative and normative institutions though institutional difference is crucial.
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