Cross-border education under the spotlight

A new study from the European Commission has revealed that cross-border higher education affects a small but growing number of students. Countries receiving high levels of cross-border provision also have high levels of outgoing student mobility – suggesting that opportunities are created “where the kind or quantity of support of higher education domestically does not meet demand”.

The study, Delivering Education across Borders in the European Union, found current patterns of cross-border higher education activity to be “quite scattered and fragmented”, with private institutions playing an important role, especially in receiving students.

It concluded that cross-border higher education activity in Europe, as a whole, was in its infancy, and affected only a tiny portion of students within the European Union (EU) – but that it was definitely on an upward curve.

Some findings

A total of 253 cross-border higher education activities were identified in 24 EU member states. There were none in Estonia, Portugal or Slovenia, and very few in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Poland. The member states receiving the highest levels of cross-border higher education activity were Spain and Greece.

Researchers found that, when considered from a regional perspective, cross-border higher education occurred mainly, or in some countries even exclusively, in capital cities.

This indicated that political, economic and cultural hubs were particularly attractive for foreign providers – possibly because demand was greater due to higher population density and the reputational bonus of being established in a metropolitan centre.

This correlates with the geographic distribution of domestic higher education institutions, which are found mostly in capital cities and other urban centres rather than in rural areas.

The findings clearly reflected that, at a global level, the export of cross-border higher education activities was dominated by Anglophone countries. Generally, private institutions accounted more frequently for exporting branch campuses while public institutions dominated the export side of validation and franchise agreements.

Researchers also revealed that the major receiving countries were those where qualitative and quantitative demand for programmes at Western hemisphere institutions outstripped domestic provision.

In some countries – for example Greece and Cyprus – a lack of modernisation within whole systems provided an overall context for the demand for high levels of cross-border higher education; while in others it might be more a question of insufficient quantity or quality of provision relative to demand in very specific areas (or niches).

Interestingly, it was found that there was seldom any publicly available information – for instance on receiving institutions' websites – on issues like quality and accreditation, and almost none on the degree-granting exporting institutions’ provisions for quality assurance.

Regulation

Less than a third of member states had relatively strict requirements. But even those with no regulation (about a quarter of them) might, in practice, deter cross-border higher education to some degree, either by not allowing the accreditation of foreign provision, or by having in place extensive procedures for accreditation.

The researchers noted that while it was obvious countries with strict regulation lacked high levels of cross-border higher education activity (with the exception of Greece), they did not know the level of demand from exporting institutions to operate in those countries and therefore whether restrictions were reducing incoming cross-border higher education.

Of the four countries in which in-depth interviews were conducted, Austria was the most representative of most of the EU member states; it had no major higher education exports, but did experience some incoming cross-border higher education activity.

There was awareness in this country that evidence was required about the issue before appropriate mechanisms could be implemented, and the authors said this approach might provide lessons for other countries.

The study revealed that most countries with some form of regulation relied to a large extent upon the accreditation processes of other countries in safeguarding the quality of the cross-border higher education they received.

In this regard, said the researchers, the approach of Britain’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education to auditing the UK’s exports was a good practice.

The money factor

It was suggested that a need to charge fees might also affect cross-border higher education – that it was usually self-funding because of restrictions on the use of public funding should be seen as an important factor to be taken into account.

Tuition fees were likely to be high, so in countries where students paid little or nothing for higher education, the appeal of cross-border higher education would probably be reduced.

This might be the case in Sweden, for example, although evidently this factor is overridden by other factors in countries like Austria, Denmark and Germany, which have low or no tuition fees but show a relatively high incidence of received cross-border higher education.

It would be wrong to reduce the motivations for cross-border higher education to purely commercial terms, said the report. There were clearly valid educational reasons for well-established and reputable higher education institutions engaging in cross-border higher education activities.

Lack of information

The main point emerging from the research was the lack of hard evidence available, about the effects of cross-border higher education, to inform national and European debates. This could be partly due to the low incidence of cross-border higher education in many countries.

The only example of data gathering regarding overseas provision that had been done in a systematic way was found to be the country reviews conducted by the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, although the most recent examples covered provision by UK institutions in countries outside Europe.

In the absence of evidence, perceptions – and sometimes mis-perceptions – dominate. Cross-border higher education is a tiny fraction of most countries’ higher education at the moment but where it does reach high levels, the topic can become highly charged, and points of view can become polarised.

* Delivering Education across Borders in the European Union was prepared by the research team under the lead of authors Uwe Brandenburg, Andrew McCoshan, Lukas Bischof, Anne Kreft, Ulrike Storost, Hannah Leichsenring, Frederic Neuss, Britta Morzick and Sabine Noe. It was conducted on behalf of the European Commission by a consortium led by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, including Ecorys, ESMU and Horváth & Partners, in partnership with CHE Consult.